Learn French with Alexa is a website and YouTube channel that offers several French courses, including a complete French course and a TEF exam prep course.
Her YouTube channel is regularly updated and has over 1,100 videos. Speaking in a mixture of English and French, she highlights important words and phrases with on-screen text and repetition. Words and exercises are presented in a “call and response” structure, meaning that beginners get a chance to listen to and repeat the new vocabulary.
She has tons of playlists, making it easy to find her grammar-focused videos—for example, she has a playlist on French verbs, adjectives, grammar problems, adverbs, tenses and more.
Other sites use scripted content. FluentU uses a natural approach that helps you ease into the French language and culture over time. You’ll learn French as it’s actually spoken by real people.
FluentU has a wide variety of great content, like interviews and web series, as you can see here:
FluentU brings native videos within reach with interactive subtitles.
You can tap on any word to look it up instantly. Every definition has examples that have been written to help you understand how the word is used.
For example, if you tap on the word "crois," you'll see this:
Practice and reinforce all the vocabulary you've learned in a given video with FluentU's adaptive quizzes. Swipe left or right to see more examples for the word you’re learning and play the mini-games found in the dynamic flashcards, like "fill in the blank."
As you study, FluentU tracks the vocabulary that you’re learning and uses this information to give you a 100% personalized experience.
It gives you extra practice with difficult words—and reminds you when it’s time to review what you’ve learned.
If you’re on the hunt for a comprehensive look at beginner French grammar, Tex’s Grammar Tutorial is your go-to site. An off-shoot of the University of Texas’s learning program, the website was designed by French experts to cover all of the essential grammar points that students would be exposed to.
The listening exercises are recorded entirely in French, and the content of the lessons is relatively simplistic and well-explained. Podcast content is supplemented by downloadable PDF exercises and guides, making it very easy to follow the arc of the lesson.
All grammar pages on the website are constructed with written tables, English language explanations, dialogue snippets and examples of the rules in use. Each page comprehensively covers the grammar rule, presenting it in a number of different ways to ensure you understand everything clearly.
If you have a little more time to dedicate to your learning activities, you might want to consider an interactive website. Balancing written, recorded and visual content, A Vos Plumes! offers a thorough introduction to beginner grammar.
Founded by a French professor, the site is packed full of essential learning tools for both students and teachers, focusing particularly on writing in French.
Individual lessons are presented with full grammatical explanations in English. Similar English grammar is used to support the same rules in French and are used as a guide throughout the lesson.
But the videos are presented entirely in French spoken at a clear, steady speed to help ease beginners into lessons. Spoken grammar points are supported by on-screen text which breaks down each linguistic rule.
With a focus on grammar and the technicalities of the French language, this website is the perfect resource to use if you really want to get into the nitty-gritty of learning grammar.
It’s presented as a free digital magazine and covers topics from grammar to idioms and business vocabulary.
Written entirely in French,Bonjour de France exposes you to French vocabulary in every scenario. Lessons are presented with initial grammatical explanations, a multiple choice exercise and a more complex written activity.
Although there is a great intermediate-level section on the website, Bonjour de France contains content suitable for any learning level. So if you find yourself powering through your lessons, you can move on to the next level with ease.
A French podcast that covers multiple types of learning activities, Coffee Break French is suitable for any level. If you’re an intermediate learner, it’s best to start at season three. The first two seasons are for beginners.
The lessons have a good smattering of both French and English and feature a native speaker host. As the seasons progress, the percentage of French spoken gradually increases.
After each dialogue, there’s an in-depth look at vocabulary and cultural points, which are picked apart. In the early seasons, teacher Mark spends a lot of time looking at linguistic meanings, but as the seasons progress he focuses more and more on grammatical rules and native idioms.
The podcast is free on streaming platforms like Spotify, but you can upgrade to get the members-only material if you want downloadable lesson notes, transcripts, quizzes and more.
At the end of a group of lessons, Mark goes back through old content in an interactive quiz format, asking you to complete a number of spoken exercises based on what you already know. The quizzes ask you to translate an English statement into French, and think about possible variations in grammar uses.
When grammar rules become more complex, hearing them pronounced out loud can often prove to be really useful. After a number of lessons, Mark presents grammar-focused episodes that run through topics like verb conjugations and uses of the subjunctive.
If you’re looking for an interactive website with detailed explanations, then ThoughtCo is for you. Complete with an archive of grammar material, the website is a great place to get all of the essential information and then practice what you’ve learned.
Grammar lessons consist of in-depth written guides. Presented in English, each lesson gives a comprehensive explanation of the featured grammar rules and includes a number of written examples.
Examples pick apart each element of the grammar rule and explain its specific use in the sentence, which ensures you have a total grasp on what’s going on.
Of course, written explanations on their own can prove a little dry after time and it’s a good idea to shake things up. While the site doesn’t contain quizzes of its own, each lesson has links to tons of learning resources, such as videos, written tests and reading exercises.
Lawless French has a huge collection of free French grammar lessons. They’re blog post style, and you can scroll through the page to find the grammar topic you need to learn.
I also really like that you can filter the lessons according to the parts of speech. So you can choose to see lessons that only cover topics related to adjectives, adverbs, conjunctions, nouns, etc.
Another way to sort the lessons is by level—another feature I’m a big fan of. Lawless French has lessons for all levels from A1 to C1, and they’re listed in a very well-structured order. So you can work through the blog post lessons as if the level were an actual grammar course.
Laura from Lawless French has also published her “French Workbook for Dummies.” You can get it on Amazon and it’s broken down into six parts, starting from the basics of French to an upper beginner/lower intermediate level.
Lingolia has various sections and sub-sections offering free French grammar lessons in a blog post style similar to Lawless French.
You can sort the lessons by grammar categories, which include verbs, tenses, nouns, pronouns and determiners, sentence structure and more. Once you select the category you see an overview of the topic and then more specific lessons related to the main one.
For example, selecting “Tenses” takes you to a page with a brief overview of how many French tenses exist and what exactly they are. Then, you can choose the tense you want to learn—such as the present, simple past, future perfect, etc. The overview page gives a brief summary of what each tense is and includes a snapshot of example verbs conjugated in the tense.
Clicking on it brings you to the full lesson, which teaches you when to use the tense, how to conjugate it, exceptions to the rules and example sentences.
One thing I really like about Lingolia is that each lesson comes with a free practice exercise. It’s a fill-in-the-blank quiz that has you conjugate the verb in parentheses and you can check your answers at the end.
How to Learn French Grammar Easily
Pick one grammar resource and stick to it. Following a well-structured course or lesson collection lets you work through the grammar topics in a logical order that will use your current knowledge to build on what you learn next. It keeps motivation high and lowers the risk of attempting a grammar topic that’s too advanced for you in the moment.
Do French grammar exercises. Practicing what you’ve learned is the key to mastering French grammar. It’s not as simple as flipping through flashcards like you do when learning vocabulary—you have to actually produce French sentences that use the concept enough times for it to become more natural in your brain.
Observe how French grammar is used in real life. Watch French media, indulge in French content, talk to native speakers. The more you’re exposed to real French that doesn’t just come out of a textbook, the more you’ll be exposed to the grammar concepts you’re learning. That validation cements the concepts in your mind and eventually makes it easier for you to use them on your own.
Write everything down. Take good lesson notes. Include plenty of example sentences, draw verb conjugation charts, write down when the concept is used and review them regularly.
Memorize example sentences like they’reflashcards. One of the most effective methods I’ve used to get more comfortable with grammar is turning my example sentences into flashcards. Make sure the French side is on the back so you have to translate from English and treat them like your vocabulary decks. Memorizing the sentence gives your brain an example to fall back on when it comes time to use the grammar concept in real life, making it easier to create your own on the spot.
Taking grammar seriously is worth the time, and it will soon become just another part of your study plan.
But don’t just read and memorize grammar rules: you need to see these constructions used in context. By seeing and processing them in the real world, you’re engaging with the concepts in a way that makes them stick easier in your brain.
