French for beginners
If you are starting from zero, you do not need an overview but an order. This page gives you one — six steps, each with its grammar topic, what it is about and the matching words.
Why an order and not a list
This site has 130 grammar topics. For someone just starting out, that is not an offer but a wall: everything looks equally important, and the obvious way in — starting at the top — leads into the tense system before a single sentence is in place.
So the order below is not a sorting of the material but a recommendation, and it follows one rule: every step must make one more sentence possible that you could not say before. Anything that does not — however correct it may be — comes later.
Three things first
- Twenty minutes on six days beats two hours on one. That is not a lecture but the reason this site has a daily goal: revision works through intervals, and you need more than one interval.
- You will not learn pronunciation here. This site explains and tests, both in writing. Speaking and listening are learnt with people or with recordings — the site is no substitute for that and does not try to be.
- Mistakes are the point of practice, not its failure. Whatever you get wrong comes back tomorrow; whatever sticks, only in five weeks. If you only practise what you already know, you do not move forward.
The first six steps
Name, origin, job, quality, place.
To go with it: Greetings and politeness — 40 words.
Possession, age, and everything that happens to you.
To go with it: Person and family — 48 words.
The largest set, and almost without exceptions.
To go with it: The most important verbs — 59 words.
The definite article — and what it tells you about the word.
To go with it: Living and the household — 54 words.
In front of anything you cannot count.
To go with it: Food and drink — 56 words.
Two words, with the verb in between — and no «do».
To go with it: Words for everything — 87 words.
And after that?
After these six steps you can manage simple sentences in the present and the past, questions and the first few hundred words. That is the point at which an order is no longer needed: from here, the way forward depends on what you need the language for.
All 35 topics of level A1 are on the A1 page; if you would rather practise straight away than read, start with the daily dose — it decides for itself what comes up today.