Top Sites for French Reading Practice Exercises
You have probably read French materials before, but did it feel like you were just going through the motions? Reading practice necessary, and the challenge is doing it effectively and actually improving your comprehension.
So in this post, we will highlight our favorite resources for French reading practice exercises. They come with questions and other tools to help you determine whether you really understood what you read.
Contents
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Lingua French Reading
Lingua is a good place to start. They only have readings for CEFR levels A1 (beginner), A2 (upper beginner) and B1 (intermediate).
Not only are the readings clearly listed by level of difficulty, but you can also see the word count to the right of each one’s title.
Although their selection may seem small, the passages cover a fair variety of formats from everyday dialogues to descriptions of places. Furthermore, each one is accompanied by a few multiple choice questions in French.
Another helpful feature of Lingua is that you can easily download each passage as a PDF to work with offline.
Or, if you prefer physical paper, print it out! Tangibly circling words to look up or underlining interesting grammatical constructions can be quite the fruitful practice.
LanguageGuide.org
LanguageGuide divides its reading exercises into three parts: beginning readings, jokes and advanced readings. Each reading is accompanied by an audio recording.
The jokes are quite short, but do offer good practice. This is a nice place to go if you are getting a bit bogged down with reading about someone’s fictional vacation or a French cultural description.
LanguageGuide’s advanced readings feature literary excerpts from Guy de Maupassant, a well-known French author from the 19th century.
LanguageGuide has a few other unique features. Difficult words are underlined so you can hover over for the definition. If you are really stuck, hover over the ending punctuation mark of a sentence for a full translation of that portion.
Do not cheat, though! Only do this if you absolutely cannot figure out the meaning on your own.
For beginning readings and jokes, you have the option of hiding the text while the recording plays. Thus, you can practice listening by seeing how much you understand before reading the passage.
Once again, if you are already there…
French-Resources.org
This one has intermediate and advanced reading exercises. Several have a headphones icon under their title, which means that exercise also has a listening component.
This resource, with its variety of dictation, multiple-choice and fill-in-the-blank exercises, is highly interactive.
You do have to give your email before you can actually complete an exercise, but they do not ask for money.
Once you have access, each answer is graded individually and if you give the incorrect answer (for fill-in-the-blank questions), you will be provided a helpful hint, such as the first letter of the correct answer.
Le Point du FLE
I love this site, which basically does the hard work of finding quality reading exercises for you!
In fact, your only problem may be too many options!
Le Point du FLE links directly to specific reading exercises spanning dozens of websites. All levels from beginner to upper-advanced are represented, and each link has its CEFR level listed to the right.
Most (if not all) of the passages have some kind of accompanying exercise. The fact that so many different sites and resources are represented makes for great variety in the format and subject matter of each one.
Following the tips and taking advantage of these resources will definitely have you not merely reading French, but reading French effectively.
These French reading practice exercises help ensure that you are paying attention and really understand the meaning. Dictionaries and other features will help expand your vocabulary and ultimately your reading ability.
With practice, you might even be able to read annoying French bumper stickers.
Download: This blog post is available as a convenient and portable PDF that you can take anywhere. Click here to get a copy. (Download)
And One More Thing...
If you like learning French at your own pace and from the comfort of your device, I have to tell you about FluentU.
FluentU makes it easier (and way more fun) to learn French by making real content like movies and series accessible to learners. You can check out FluentU's curated video library, or bring our learning tools directly to Netflix or YouTube with the FluentU Chrome extension.
One of the features I find most helpful is the interactive captions—you can tap on any word to see its meaning, an image, pronunciation, and other examples from different contexts. It’s a great way to pick up French vocab without having to pause and look things up separately.
FluentU also helps reinforce what you’ve learned with personalized quizzes. You can swipe through extra examples and complete engaging exercises that adapt to your progress. You'll get extra practice with the words you find more challenging and even be reminded you when it’s time to review!
You can use FluentU on your computer, tablet, or phone with our app for Apple or Android devices. Click here to take advantage of our current sale! (Expires at the end of this month.)
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