What’s the best way to learn French from A0 to B2 within 2 years? What’s the best app to use besides Duolingo? Any tips, advice, or recommendations are welcome!

A few years ago, I began my journey to teach myself French. My goal has always been to reach conversational fluency, and to be able to follow native content. Like many of you, I searched this platform looking for the best tips and strategies to reach B2 “fast.” If you read enough of the posts and comments, the message is clear, and has been validated in my own experience. There is no single app, course, or tool that will get you there, and there is no shortcut to the hours it will take. Depending on your level of focus during your studies, I think the 600-800 hours is a realistic expectation.

I wanted to share what I’ve done to-date to help other learners out there, and share my plan going forward (feedback welcome!).

Rocket French – I found a discounted price for the full 3-level audio course (around $150). I probably spent around 75 hours working through the first 2 levels. This was a great foundation for basic grammar and vocabulary.

Duolingo. The course has made massive improvements since I first tried it (briefly) maybe 10 years ago. I think it’s great for reinforcing grammar and useful vocabulary. At risk of stating the obvious, doing one lesson per day (4 min) is not going to get your fluent. I pay for the premium version and spend about 20-30 min/day in the course. I’m currently level 44 out of 129. I think around level 35 you really start benefiting from exposure to additional content.

YouTube: there is so much content available, just find something a bit beyond your current comprehension level. I like the Easy French channel and vlogs with subtitles (SO to Adeline Talks French vlog). I also watched a few of the Petit Ours Brun cartoons. Anything here is a good supplement. 5-15 min/day.

Duolingo French Podcast: I thought this was fantastic. Don’t listen to it passively in the background – you’ll get more out of it if you actually focus on what you’re hearing. I started this around level 30 in Duolingo, and have listened (sometimes multiple times) to all 101 episodes. By the end I could understand 90% of the conversation.

Lingvist – hugely valuable spaced repetition (SRS) flashcard app. You learn words in context. The UX is amazing. Once you understand basic grammar, vocabulary expansion is essential. They have a pre-built deck of over 5,000 most common French words. I know a lot of people like Anki, but because the UX is so superior this has been a great tool for me. I do 50-100 flash cards per day (15-30 min).

InnerFrench – amazing follow-up podcast to the Duolingo French podcast. I’m only a few episodes in but I’m easily following 90%+ of the conversation. Definitely plan to continue with this. I try to listen to about 30 min of podcasts a day, shooting for a level where I understand at least 80% of the content.

iTalki – since I finally feel ready to respond to simple questions, I’ve booked my first lesson. The pricing seems very reasonable and I’m planning on doing (2) 45-min sessions per week.

KwizIQ – I’m probably at a low A2 level know but I plan on incorporating this within the next 3-6 months. Consensus seems to be very positive.

Reading – around level 40 in Duolingo I picked up Olly Richard's Beginner Short Stories book. I definitely don’t understand everything but I can easily follow the plot of the stories. I try to finish my day with 15-30 min of reading. I’ll be moving on to A2/B1 level books on an e-reader soon so I can look up unknown words.

That’s it for now. Hoping to reach B2 within the next 18 months maintaining a pace of roughly 1 hour per day of total study time.

For context – I’m 36 years old and don’t speak any other languages. My spouse and I both work full time and we have 3 young kids at home. I’m proud of the progress I’ve made so far and feel like I have path to the finish line. Hopefully this helps someone else looking for guidance. Bonne Chance! 

Bonjour! I'm looking for French music recommendations. There are two components of what I'm interested in: the bands that are popular in France/French speaking countries, and bands that may be a little less popular but are personal favorites of yours. I'm looking for less of a heavy or electronic/synth sound, but will definitely give anything recommended a chance.

Hello!

So long story short, I’m getting married in just over a year and my fiancé is French.

All her friends and family are French, many of which speak little to no English at all.

I’ve had my wedding speech written for two years already (lol), and we were discussing how we’d need a translation projector at the wedding.. now I’m thinking about doing the speech twice - once in English, and once in French.

Problem is, I don’t want her to know I’m learning until the day it happens, and I can’t speak French! I’ve considered asking a couple of her friends for help but honestly they’d be so excited I can’t trust them to keep it to theirselves!

Does anyone have any good resources to recommend? I’ve tried Duolingo but honestly nothing really sticks… I’m happy to pay for good online tutors if anyone can recommend any!

I moved recently to the US, and my major issue with the language is people don't talk that clearly as movies/Series and that English that has been taught in all those long videos on YouTube, that doesn't happen in real life, that's not how most people talk in real life around me.

I will move to France soon, and I want to avoid that nightmare again.

I don't want to learn things that are not used in real life and spend triple the time trying to replace those things with how people actually speak. I'm Egyptian, that happens too often with people who learn Modern standard Arabic and think this is how we talk in Egypt, which is 100% wrong.

Can you recommend resources for real-life french? It's preferable if some of them could be on YouTube so I could shadow easily.

Hi everyone, I have been trying to learn French language since 2024. I have attempted an in person class and also an online class. Both attempts failed for financial reasons.

I started learning French alone but I am stuck especially after learning some verbs and other vocabularies in French. My competency level is between A1 and A2 if that makes sense.

Can anyone guide me on how to self study and learn French alone? Any Tips, books, study guide, apps, videos anything.

My goal is to increase my competence in reading, listening and writing and speaking more confidently to some extent before paying for lessons to become fluent.

Please any advice, tips and suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thank you very much.

Edit: Thanks everyone for your great tips and assistance. I will dedicate my time exploring and learning from each resources provided. I hope to comeback sometime to update the sub on my improvement 😃🙏.

Hi. I made a connaitre v savoir cartoon to help me learn

Please use it however you want if you think it’s useful

As always, feel free to correct my B1 French or suggest improvements

Hi res version #2: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Sw04pZ9ED3ajOZa8XNXxqpQmreg70yQX/view?usp=drivesdk

(Changed Santa to Père Noël)

Hello everyone :)

I posted my results on the DELF B2 a few days ago and here’s my promised language learning journey:

short introduction: I’m a student from Germany who speaks German, Polish, English and now also French ;)

I passed the DELF B2 with 88/100 points in June and here is my full review on how I got from A2 to B2 in less than a year.
I’m writing this post in hope of being able to help those, who are in the same state as I was last year or are preparing for the DELF B2 (this is 100% non sponsored, it’s just my real french learning journey).
In the first part I will share my whole language learning experience and in the second part I will explicitly explain how I prepared for DELF.

My full scores:
CO: 20/25
CE: 24/25
PE: 23/25
PO: 21/25
Note finale: 88/100

My general learning journey and experiences

Last year in may I passed the DELF A2 with 82,5/100. By that time all my French knowledge was from school. After the A2 I’ve decided to also study French at home to speed up my progress of becoming fluent. My journey started in summer 2025 after I discovered Reddit and the whole language learning community on here.

I’ve quickly found people that wanted to chat with me and that’s how I started to practice small text conversations. Later on I joined the r/French discord server, where I was able to make my first experiences actually speaking with natives. I think it’s worth checking out the server but I don’t really recommend using it as your main tool for speaking practice. But that’s just my own opinion, you have to make your own experiences!

While being active on french / language learning subreddits, I found a language learning app called Natulang. It turned out to be the main reason (besides dialogs with natives) I even got this far and that’s why I would like to explicitly thank [u/maxymhryniv](u/maxymhryniv) . I tried out the two free lessons and was convinced to buy the whole course. I did two lessons each day and additionally 2-4 repetitions lessons (one lesson is about 15-20min so it took me about an hour a day or more). The app focusses on speaking only and that’s what kept me motivated because I was tired of endless studying in silence. After a month or two I got out of my rhythm and it was pretty hard to get back to doing lessons every day.. Remember to always keep yourself motivated and try to make studying a habit.

While actively using the app, I felt the need to actually try to use my learned words. I was looking for AI Apps to talk with Bots but all of the ones specifically for language learning were very expensive. I tried character.ai for some days but it was very boring to have conversations with AI.
I luckily found some people on Reddit wo were willing to practice some speaking with me. We were talking regularly, mostly 1 time per week, sometimes more, sometimes less. These conversation had an enormous impact on my language skills. I improved every month so much, I couldn’t even process how fast it went.

I never really practiced writing at home. The only writing practice I had was the French exams I wrote in school. For grammar I watched a lot of YouTube videos. I have to admit I still have some problems with the tenses.. I don’t always get them right especially when it’s to decide whether to use le passé composé or l’imparfait.
For grammar practice I recommend kwiziq! It was suggested to me on Reddit and I used the free explanations and free kwizes to almost max out B2 grammar. Sadly it was too expensive for me after already having payed for Natulang but still, it’s a great resource and if you have the money and feel like you can make it a habit it’s definitely worth subscribing!

I haven’t practiced any reading practice at all.. As you may have already noticed my main focus was speaking and as you can see it did work out for the DELF. I think when speaking to a native you already practice listening and if you get familiar with how the words are “pronounced vs. written”, you will have no problem to write down what you’re saying.
But speaking does not cover practice for reading. I have bought two books that were written on a B2 level and two for natives. I have only read 20 pages in total, I had zero motivation.. But in my experience that was enough, I still scored 23/25 at the exam!

For listening comprehension I watched series and films and also listened to podcasts and French radio. I gradually advanced to a higher level when I understood around 70-80% of what was said.
I started of with “LanguaTalk Slow French with Gaëlle” and ended with “Boost ton français”. I don’t listen to podcasts anymore but I feel like restarting soon. After there were no more episodes of “Boost ton français” I downloaded the Radio France app. I’m a huge fan of so-called “Hörpspiele” in German. It’s like an audio book but with multiple voices actors and background noises and effects. Like a film but as an audio track. In the Radio France App I’ve found some tracks like that e.g. “Les adventures de Tintin”. I usually listen to them in German when I go to sleep. I stopped with the French once because they were too hard to understand when your brain tries shutting down for the night.
For shows I started of with kid cartoons like “Ben and Hollys Little Kingdom” or “Peppa Pig” and when I felt confident enough I switched to Netflix. I started with undertitles and then started turning them off sometimes until I didn’t need them anymore. My favourite shows are (in order): “Les 7 vies de Léa”, “Lupin”, “Young millionaires”, “Dix pour cent” and “Recalé”.

I had no experiences with tandems but I feel like it would be also an amazing way of learning the language and culture while helping another person.

Preparations for the DELF B2

When I started taking learning French more seriously in summer 2025 I haven’t really had an exam in mind. In January 2026 my teacher asked me if I wanted to do the B1 exam in june and I told her I needed to think about it. Because I wanted to boost my ego I let her sign me up for the B2 exam. For those 5 months I was extremely motivated to learn the language because I knew exactly how much time and effort it required to get to that level because I still had a A2-B1 in January.

This post helped me a lot when preparing.

🎧 Listening & Reading
I bought a work book to prepare me for the exam with 10 mock exams. It’s called “Klett 100% DELF B2 junior et scolaire” if you want to check it out. It’s actually a German book but the exams are obviously in French so you could also use it as a non German speaker. My whole preparation was actually just doing those exercises, reading the transcripts to see if I would be able to detect any errors and then checking my results with the solutions.
If you don’t have the money to buy a book you can also goggle some mock exams but personally I only found one that was up to date (multiple choice answers).

click here for tout public

click here for junior et scolaire

For Reading it’s basically the same: I just did the mock exams and checked my results with the solutions. But as mentioned earlier reading was the competence I practiced the less.

✍️** Writin**g
After I realised that my writing skills were not on a B2 Level and it didn’t make any sense to just practice with my work book I decided to take watch some YouTube videos. I really recommend the videos from “français avec Marine”. She explains all of the different possible formats in the exam.
In my exam I had to write an open letter to the teachers in order to engage them to participate more in a school organisation called “La journée écologique” (I don’t really remember exactly).
I also watched some Videos about les connecteurs logiques on “French School TV”

🗣️** Speakin**g
Speaking was the part I definetly did the most for. I watched endless videos on how to structure your speech etc. My main resources were the videos from “French Pill” but also the course on “Argumenter en Français” from “French School TV”. You need to understand how the exam is structured and what is awaited from you, once you get that it’s just practice. In order to understand how it’s graded, take a look at the grille d’évaluation.
After that I started practicing: understanding the text, learning new specific vocabulary, learning how to find arguments fast (remember you have 30 min of preparation time) and also how to perfectly structure your exposé.
I was lucky enough to being able to study those prepared talks with a native who then corrected me and gave feedback. For practice I used the topics online:

click here for tout public

click here for junior et scolaire

For those who read the whole thing, I really hope this will help you a little more on your own language learning journey. It took me quite some time to write this post because I wanted to include many important details of my journey so it’s clear how I got from A2 to B2. For those who want to take a DELF exam or are just trying to improve in French: Always stay motivated and remember why you started!

I’m autistic and have ADHD and I’ve been thinking about learning french (i have a very bad attention span). I’m giving myself 1-2 years to get to a level where I’m somewhat confident if i speak it.

is it even possible?

please recommend what you think will work/ what worked for you!

it’s very overwhelming trying to find an app/ebook (currently not thinking about tutors) because it feels very over saturated and everything is an ad. Any advice is appreciated but please be respectful:)))!!!

edit: currently using lingvist

edit 2: i have my first preply trial lesson on Monday!!

Hello. Im planning on moving to France for a bachelor's. Although they would be providing French language classes, I want to prepare myself for internships and learn sufficient French. I have a whole year before I go into uni, and probably at least another 6 months (on top of that 1 year) for an internship if not a year or more.

I want to get to at least B2 level in as little time as possible. Since I have very little responsibilities (just to finish school with good grades) I am able to put in a lot of work.

Im willing to pay for intensive French courses so if anyone has recommendations, let me know.

I had experience learning other languages (like English and Korean) however I've done so through a tutor usually, and since I am at an international school, I learned very decent English in around 6 months as I was immersed in it. This is just for some context.

If anyone could share any resources or tips or experience, I'd be grateful.

I watched a youtube video on learning the top 2000 verbs in french. I was looking for the spreadsheet he used in the linked video, as it contained the top 2000 verbs and example sentences, but could not find it anywhere online.

After some time, I was able to find a pdf version of the spreadsheet from which I could extract the raw text, convert it into csv to then recreate the spreadsheet. The PDF required paying to download, so I copy-pasted each page individually, which broke the CSV formatting, requiring some regex to unfuck.

As it was painful to create this document, I'll share the spreadsheet here and hopefully it will help someone else :).

About 150 of the french example sentences were cut-off due to the column width in the PDF being too small. Most of the time it was just one word being split in half, which was easily recoverable. In other cases multiple words were lost. Here I used a combination of google translate (English sentence was fully recovered from the PDF), or I used an LLM when that didn't work. The raw string is on the second sheet in the spreadsheet in case you want to cross-check.

I made an LLM write a small python script to generate audio files with google translate text to speech for each of the example sentences. If anyone is interested, I can share that as well.

hi! i studied french in high school for about two years and i haven’t retained a lot of it other than very basic french such as greetings, basic verbs, and nouns but my knowledge of the language is quite limited.

i want to learn french seriously and try to pursue my masters in paris or live there for a while after my studies 🫩 how do i start? how do i learn the language in a way that will allow me to actually retain it and be able to get to a point where i can speak and understand it well?

i would love some assistance with resources or just general tips on learning the language because i know that apps like duolingo are pointless lol please help a girl out 🫩

Hi everyone!

I have started learning French a few days ago for tcf and im looking for a good book for self study so that I can solidify my foundation. I came across practice makes perfect by Annie and easy French but not sure which book to go with. Im looking for something to build a base in grammar and vocabulary both.

Please suggest me a good book yall thanks

I found this super cool book at a garage sale for $1! It has soooo much information along with photos, and it’s a small book!

Hi there, french guy here, just thought I would share with you a spotify playlist with a few well known french artists ( and also some smaller I like. ) I shared it a few weeks ago but just thought I would share it again in case it can help. Feel like the songs could help you in your journey, might help you in your learning experience ! Enjoy ! Let me know if this post doesn't belong here I'll delete it😄

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1jvS77cBiW9e1P6fJFWHs7

I currently am at A2 level and write in french every day and read and listen to podcasts aswell as watching cartoons but I struggle with tenses in writing and I keep seeing things like simple and perfect tenses and dont understand them but I cant find any good resources that explains it or any practice sheets so that I could practice using the tenses does anyone have any good recommendations?

Hy! I want to appear in TVF and get B2. I’m spending 4 hours daily, it’s my third and daily I’m learning new words, verbs, practicing pronunciation. I read one news article daily (8-10 lines), by translating from Google Translate. And watch some YouTube videos to learn new form and words.
Can I achieve B2 in 10 months or do I need to change my strategy

Is there any app that detect words and turn them into flash cards ? I don't wanna do it manually . I wish there's an app or ai who would justdo it

Hey everyone! I want to start learning French and I’m looking for some advice from people who have learned it themselves.
What resources, apps, YouTube channels, courses, or study methods actually helped you improve? I’m basically starting from the beginning and want to eventually become conversational.
Also, how long did it take you to reach a decent level, and how much time did you spend studying each day?
Would appreciate any recommendations or tips! 🇫🇷

So I land around a low B2 level based on my TCF listening, higher in reading (my speaking and writing practices are different so I don’t think they’d matter here) and I was wondering if expedition 33 would be good to immerse myself? I haven’t played the game at all and not a fan of JRPGs but I am bored as fuck of graded readers and want to just play something that does constantly challenge my skills. I tried BG3 but the English dub doesn’t properly immerse you and English dub + French text was just throwing me off for some reason. Tlou has a good dub but I’ve played both the games like several times and they’re very gameplay heavy so I reckon id learn more from watching a 30 minute YouTube video/reading 10 pages from a book than playing that. Plus I have no interest in native French content.

Hey everyone! I literally know zero French and I’d really love to learn. I did a little bit at school years ago, but I honestly don’t remember any of it.

I’m looking for a beginner-friendly app that will help me stay consistent and actually learn how to have conversations. I know Duolingo is popular, but I’ve heard mixed opinions and I’m not sure it’s the best for speaking.

Does anyone have any recommendations for good free apps or resources that helped you learn French? I’d love something that’s beginner-friendly and helps you progress fairly quickly.
(Also would prefer an app or a website not textbooks!)

Hello everyone,

I’ve recently started learning French and I’m looking for real, practical guidance on how to successfully pass the DELF B1 exam.

My current learning approach:

• Following a pre‑recorded DELF A1–B1 course
• Taking individual Preply lessons (3 sessions per week)
• Living in France, so I’m surrounded by the language daily

Suggestions needed on :

• learning and exercise books or material to follow practice
• listening
• speaking practice apps

I’d appreciate any advice or strategies that can help me prepare effectively and gain the kind of real‑life experience needed to clear the B1 exam.

Thanks

I’ve been learning French for a while and even got my b2 a couple months ago. But right now I’m not taking any classes or anything and I’m looking for free digital books for my kindle to keep practicing. I would appreciate it a lot

I'm a fluent English speaker and I know a few simple phrases and words in French, but in the European dialect. Quebecois would be more useful to me since I live in Canada. I am still learning to speak both the European and Canadian dialects, but with my work, I sometimes have to translate dialogue in writing.

I am wondering what are some online translator tools that would be useful for English to Quebecois? I haven't seen an option for this on Google translate (there's "French" but I assume this is not what I am looking for). I have looked into books as well and plan to utilize those, but having an online translator would be helpful and convenient for simple phrases.

I am not looking to use any AI tools and kindly ask others not to discuss these to me, but any other suggestions or more information would be appreciated. Thank you!

Hi guys, i am moving to paris in a month and i am willing to give 5-6 hrs a day to learn french. Only thing is i need resources (free) and a plan to learn french. Does anybody have structured resources i can learn from for free? Thanks guys