French for beginners

Join 50 million + others using Memrise. Have fun, remember more and learn the most important conversations you need for travel, work or just to impress your partner. This is your fastest, most entertaining route to speaking French right now.

Banner-image

French for Beginners

If you’re looking for a French crash course, you’ve come to the right place. French beginners come to Memrise for an entertaining and enriching way to learn basic French language. As well as the vocabulary you’d expect, there’s our homemade French video for beginners, featuring native speakers using conversational French for beginners in context – in their homeland, France!

One of our top tips is to learn beginners French online. Having your learning to hand on your phone is key to making it a natural habit. Any spare moment you like, you can recall what you’ve learned so far and throw in a couple more words. Little and often.

But with so much information about French for beginners, it’s hard to know where to start. Here’s what the language learning experts at Memrise recommend.

Keys To Learning French for Beginners

The best way to learn French for beginners is to practise! This used to mean signing up for basic French lessons, or buying a textbook to teach yourself basic French grammar. But that takes time, money and isn’t that fun. And learning a language should be fun, because if it isn’t, you won’t practise!

You can find some great French exercises for beginners online, but also make sure you’ve got some audio and video so your pronunciation is on point. As a nation, they create wonderful media, so grab a classic film or some French literature for beginners. Watching French movies for beginners is a joy.

Check out a classic like Le Weekend (not so tricky to translate). It’s a great way to practise your listening skills while you learn French and soak up a little cultural history.

The key to learning beginners French online is to combine basic French grammar with some key vocabulary in the form of some basic French words. Add a couple of simple French sentences and a few clever language hacks and you have a magic recipe for basic French conversation.

Most important of all: there’s no place for perfectionism when it comes to practising French. In fact, worrying about speaking perfectly can actually hinder French beginners’ progress. Remember: everyone makes mistakes. That’s the best way to learn!

How to Learn Conversational French for Beginners

We’re sorry to break it to you, but there’s no way to flip someone from knowing just the basics of French to speaking fluently overnight. The good news, however, is that you can quickly and easily learn conversational French for beginners and the most useful French phrases which will help you to communicate with the people you meet.

Start with a course of beginners French online to pick up words for meeting new people – how to introduce yourself, where you’re from, how long you’re staying, and so on.

A great way to deepen your familiarity with these words is to look up French video for beginners, you’ll find conversations to follow along. It’s a fantastic technique to pick up the French language for beginners.

Then, once you’ve got the basic French language nailed, it’s time to head out and try it! You’ll need to put yourself out there, but you’ll find most French speakers love that you’re making an effort in learning French for beginners and will meet you halfway.

And don’t forget, a conversation is about interpersonal connection. It’s about conveying thought, opinion and character, bridging the void with a fellow human being, not about 100% accuracy.

It’s more fun to make someone laugh with some slang or a niche local phrase than to correctly use the imperfect subjunctive. Trust us, they won’t realise.

Learning French for Beginners with Memrise

The Memrise French for beginners course is designed to get you speaking basic French language as quickly and confidently as possible, with all words and phrases meticulously selected by our in-house French language experts so that you learn the most useful basics of French first.

You can learn beginners French on our website too – there's a huge variety of French exercises for beginners, so you won't get bored of the same lessons as you advance through the levels. In fact, behind the scenes, AI will be creating new classes for you French beginners based on how you're doing. Clever stuff.

We think it's vital you’re learning to speak the French that people *actually say*. Why learn French if you can’t communicate with people, only pass vocabulary tests?

That’s why we show you French video for beginners, and how to say things like 'I think it's cool,' not 'You are eating a sandwich'. And more basic French language like 'Where's good for pizza?' and not so much 'The woman likes milk'. It’s one of our top tips for learning French.

Our award-winning tech is informed by cognitive science and cutting-edge research into language acquisition. It knows what you are due to review, which words and phrases to test you on, and when, so you can learn beginners French online far quicker than you could in the classroom.

Join over 50 million people learning a language on Memrise. Download the Memrise app or register online for free, for the best way to learn French for beginners whenever or wherever, online or offline.