Seven Useful Online Tools for Learning French
And which ones to avoid.
Most students I know use Google translate to make sentences in a foreign language. I have encountered the most bizarrely incomprehensible sentences from my students thanks to this tool. Others use Duolinguo and similar apps to learn a language. While these may be good complements, I don’t believe they actually teach a language. I myself have learnt a bunch of words and phrases but haven’t really succeeded in speaking the language.
If you want to complement your French lessons with activities online, here is a list of exercise sites, video channels, dictionaries and other resources I have compiled which serve as excellent tools to accompany you in your French journey.
- Français facile: This website explains various grammatical concepts in a simple way with examples, videos and audio files. It includes multiple choice activities with a correction to practise concepts you learn in class.
2. Podcast français facile: dialogues, texts, phonetics, grammar, videos, this site is a wealth of resources.
3. Learn French with Alexa: Alexa has an excellent channel on YouTube where you can review the alphabet, numbers, verb conjugations, vocabulary, grammar and more, all with the oh-so-French tune of the accordeon!
4. The news in français facile: If you like to follow the news and want to do it French, Radio France Internationale (RFI) has an option to do it easy French. If you have an intermediate level and want to listen to what’s going on in the world in slower French, this is the perfect solution.
5. Learn French with TV5: TV5 Monde is a French channel with programmes from France, Quebec, Switzerland, Belgium and Luxembourg which also helps you learn and practise French at different level with news videos, articles and other resources aiming at reading and listening comprehension.
6. Online dictionary: Never use Google translate to write texts or your French homework! It’s important to understand whether the word you want to use is a noun, an adjective or a verb and it’s important to figure out the context first. Wordreference is a great tool because it has an online forum with people exchanging views that provide much-needed nuance! What’s more, it has a lot more language than just French and English.
7. Type in French: Want to write in French but don’t have accents on your keyboard? Don’t fret! You can use this website to insert accents or type your whole text, copy and paste it into your document.
Apart from these tools that extremely useful to students as well as teachers, you can watch movies and listen to music to try to pick up a few words here and there.
My students often feel discouraged when they watch French films because they don’t understand anything but remember, they are made for a French audience whose mother tongue is French. The actors speak quickly and let’s not even get to the heavy dose of slang.
It’s a good way to improve your linguistic skills when you’re at an intermediate-advanced level. Songs on the other hand tend to be repetitive, with a chorus which usually keeps playing in your head. It is also a great way to memorise sounds and improve pronunciation.
It’s important to create a French ambience around you to immerse yourself in the language. Attend language exchange clubs and Meetups, go to events in your local Institut Français or Alliance Française and other Francophone cultural centres where you could meet native speakers of the language.
Lastly, none of these tools will help you if you don’t actually use the language, so don’t ask when you’ll be able to speak French, just start speaking it on day one of your learning process.
Bonus tips: Change the settings on your phone and computer to French or the language you are learning when you reach an intermediate level. Since we navigate mechanically on our devices, our brains will switch to reading the same actions in that language thereby leading to a deeper level of acquisition of certains terms, words and tasks.
You could change your Google Maps or GPS language to French in order to memorise prepositions and verbs that pertain to navigation.
Lastly, if you write emails on Gmail in French and don’t have accents on your computer, Gmail has language keyboards and auto-correct options on the top right side of the screen. I find auto-correction to be supremely annoying but it’s a good way to make accents appear without having to resort to shortcuts or another website like french.typeit.
Voilà! I hope this list of resources is useful to you and helps you along in your French journey!
Hi, I am Prajwal Madhav. I hope you enjoy my posts. If you want to learn French with me, feel free to contact me.
