week1
Greetings, polite phrases, numbers 1–20
Almost everything this week is a fixed chunk. Greetings are learned whole, not taken apart.
Noun · newVerb · newPronoun · newFixed chunk · new
0 of 19 items in your deckComfort
Standard European French
Greetings to a real conversation in ninety days.
The full ninety days. Fifteen to twenty minutes a day: warm-up review, vocabulary recall, syntax, listening and speaking, then a one-line reflection. Colours arrive one week at a time through Phase 1, and the whole palette is live from Week 4 onward.
Today
Day 10
to review
5
new items
1
minutes, roughly
The next fortnight
0 of 181 items in your deck.
Intervals: 1 · 3 · 7 · 14 · 30 · 60 · 90 days. Each item you get right moves one step further along.
The weeks
Adding a week puts its items into the review deck, a few a day.
week2
Personal information: name, age, family, where you live
Your own life, in French. Everything this week should be true about you.
NounVerbPronounArticle · newPreposition · newFixed chunk
Comfort
week3
Common nouns: the home and food
Thirty-odd everyday objects, each learned together with its gender.
NounVerbPronounArticlePrepositionAdjective · newQuestion word · newFixed chunk
Comfort
week4
First sentence frames: I have, I want, I would like
You stop collecting words this week and start combining them. Almost no new vocabulary — reuse Weeks 1 to 3 inside these frames.
NounVerbPronounArticlePrepositionAdjectiveAdverb · newConjunction · newQuestion wordFixed chunk
Comfort
Milestone
- —Greet, thank, apologise, and count to twenty.
- —Introduce yourself — name, age, town, family, retirement — in four or five sentences.
- —Name thirty-plus everyday home and food objects, with their gender.
- —Order a drink or a meal politely with Je voudrais, and ask for the bill.
week5
Present tense: verb patterns and high-frequency verbs
Green takes over. Three regular patterns and seven irregular workhorses — between them they carry most of everyday spoken French.
NounVerbAdjectiveAdverbArticlePronounPrepositionConjunctionQuestion wordFixed chunk
Comfort
week6
Questions: directions, prices, times
Magenta week. Seven question words, and enough fixed phrases to find a station, ask a price and understand the answer.
NounVerbAdjectiveAdverbArticlePronounPrepositionConjunctionQuestion wordFixed chunk
Comfort
week7
The past: recounting yesterday
The passé composé. Two ingredients — a helper verb and a past participle — and suddenly you can talk about anything that has already happened.
NounVerbAdjectiveAdverbArticlePronounPrepositionConjunctionQuestion wordFixed chunk
Comfort
week8
The near future, and joining sentences together
Aller plus a verb gets you the future for almost no effort. Connectors then turn a list of sentences into a story.
NounVerbAdjectiveAdverbArticlePronounPrepositionConjunctionQuestion wordFixed chunk
Comfort
Milestone
- —Conjugate high-frequency verbs in the present for je, vous, il/on and nous — and recognise the tu and ils forms.
- —Ask for directions, prices and times using the question words.
- —Recount yesterday in the passé composé, with both avoir and être.
- —Talk about near-future plans using aller plus an infinitive.
- —Tell a short connected story using et, mais, parce que, alors, and d'abord / puis / après / enfin.
week9
Your own life: hobbies, health and opinions
Phase 3 stops teaching structures and starts using them. This week gives you the vocabulary to talk about yourself — which is most of what conversation actually is.
NounVerbAdjectiveAdverbArticlePronounPrepositionConjunctionQuestion wordFixed chunk
Comfort
week10
Listening: following the gist
Mostly technique rather than vocabulary. The goal this week is the gist of a clip, not every word in it — and learning to be comfortable with that is the actual skill.
NounVerbAdjectiveAdverbArticlePronounPrepositionConjunctionQuestion wordFixed chunk
Comfort
week11
Speaking: five minutes a day, out loud
Fluency over accuracy. The aim is to keep talking, not to be right — and the words that buy you thinking time are the ones that make that possible.
NounVerbAdjectiveAdverbArticlePronounPrepositionConjunctionQuestion wordFixed chunk
Comfort
week12
A real task, and everything reviewed
No new grammar. One real thing done in French, and a look back over ninety days.
NounVerbAdjectiveAdverbArticlePronounPrepositionConjunctionQuestion wordFixed chunk
Comfort
Milestone
- —Talk about your hobbies, your health and your opinions using aimer, adorer, détester, préférer and the opinion frames.
- —Follow the gist of a two-minute French clip using the three-step method.
- —Deliver a five-minute monologue on the five-part scaffold, with discourse markers, without correcting yourself mid-sentence.
- —Complete a real task in French — read a menu, write a message, or book a table.
The ninety days
Days 1–30
Foundations
Greet, introduce yourself, name everyday things, and order politely.
Days 31–60
Everyday exchanges
Hold a short two-way conversation without notes.
Days 61–90
Going it alone
Handle a real trip — travel, shops, small talk, the unexpected.
Where French hides things
The vanishing article
Before a vowel or a mute h, le and la both collapse into l'. l'eau is feminine, l'hôtel is masculine, l'amie is feminine — and the article no longer tells you which. This is exactly the case the text style exists for: the slant or the bold is carrying the gender on its own.
Contracted articles
du = de + le, au = à + le, aux = à + les, des = de + les. One written word doing two grammatical jobs. They are coloured brown for the preposition and styled for the gender hiding inside.
A visible mismatch
If a slanted orange noun follows a bold grey article, something is wrong. un maison looks wrong before you have consciously worked out why — which is the whole point of running two channels at once.
The voice
Every word on the site is clickable. It speaks through a voice installed on this computer, so it costs nothing and works with the wifi off — but it does need a French voice to be installed. Without one the audio stays silent rather than read French aloud in an English accent.
[Bonjour]
Looking for voices…