240 Days of French

I have been studying french for every day for the last 240 days, Here are 6 Lessons I learned that made my learning easier faster and more effective

1. Without Internal Motivation, You Won’t Learn

I tried learning a language three times before, and each time I failed to see real results. It was because I wasn’t learning for myself—I was learning because of others.

The first time was when I was in 5th grade

A kid at my church said he could watch anime without subtitles. He wasn’t Japanese, and I thought he was the coolest kid ever.

So, I decided I wanted to learn Japanese too— to be just like him.

I watched a few videos, I did some duolingo I gave up learning the first week.

The second time was when I started learning French in school. I took French for five years, but when I restarted a few months ago and took a language test, I was still at an A2 level—one level above a beginner.

Why? Because during those years in school, I cheated on most of my assignments. I only practiced for the few hours in class each week, and I didn’t care as long as I passed because that was my only motivation, to pass. 

The third time was when I started relearning French again. My first goal was to give a speech in French at my graduation, and later, at my grandmother’s funeral.

Spoiler: I gave both speeches in English because my pronunciation was terrible. I was too afraid of how the fluent speakers would judge me. I wanted to impress them and I failed to even try

But now, my motivation to learn French comes from within. I want to be a lifelong learner, and I also want to connect more deeply with my French-speaking family. No more forced learning for others. 

Because of that, learning French no longer feels like a chore. I’m excited every day to have my next French lesson, read an article, chat with my mom and cousins, or listen to a podcast—all in French.

When your motivation comes from others, learning feels like a chore—something you have to do. But when it comes from within, it becomes a passion—something you want to do. And that’s the key to lasting success.

2. Spend More Time Learning the Basics, Especially in the Beginning 

Even today, I still struggle to speak with and understand fluent speakers. The reason? I didn’t master the basics before moving on to more advanced topics.

I’m talking about pronunciation, grammar, conjugations, and vocabulary. These are the foundation of any language. Instead of spending more time building a strong base, I jumped ahead to more complex subjects, and it was like trying to build a skyscraper before laying a solid foundation.

Here’s a quick example:

I was talking to my cousin, and I wanted to say I hadn’t seen my girlfriend in two weeks. What I said was:

"Je ne l'ai pas vue depuis des semaines."

Which means, "I haven’t seen her in some weeks."

But what I really meant to say was:

"Je ne l'ai pas vue depuis deux semaines."

That’s a small mistake, but I could’ve avoided if I had focused on mastering the basics first.

The real issue was that I couldn’t even say a simple sentence correctly, yet I knew a lot of random engineering terms in French that I’ll probably never use.

Since then, I've focused more on relearning the fundamentals of the language

To really master pronunciation, grammar, conjugations, and vocabulary, I found one key habit that made all the difference: writing everything down. Writing things out by hand solidified what I was learning and helped me remember it better. 

For pronunciation, I watched  these videos . But watching the videos alone was not enough, repeated the words and pronunciations out loud, and I would down the letters with their sounds

For grammar, I watched these videos and worked through exercises from a grammar book my french teacher gave me. 

For conjugations, I watched these videos and used reverso. 

For vocabulary, most of my learning came from InnerFrench podcasts and premade Anki vocab decks.

Each of these resources was practically useless until I started writing everything down and practicing speaking it out loud to myself

The truth is, in my opinion, the foundational work— the pronunciation, grammar, conjugations and vocab—is the most boring part of learning a language. But it’s also the most important part. Without it, everything else crumbles.

3. Read and Listen At the Same Time

When you read something while listening to the audio at the same time, you will increase your reading speed and retain more information. The contents are being stored in more places in your brain. 

Heres What I did

I Listened to Inner French Podcasts once with just the audio to see if I could pick up on the big ideas, then I would Listen to it again while reading the transcription at the same time

I like InnerFrench because they provide full transcriptions of their podcasts on their website.

The great thing about inner french is that they have the translation within the transcription, so when I come new words, I can look them up immediately without breaking my flow.

I also watched SpongeBob in French, but if you do something similar, DO NOT use English subtitles. Instead, use subtitles in the language you’re learning.

Using French subtitles was helpful because I already knew much of the context. This allowed me to connect new words and phrases with their spelling and understand how they’re used in real situations. I also was able to hear different accents using the same words that I already knew. 

Most importantly, combining reading and listening made the process much more engaging for me than just reading a text, which helped me study for longer without getting distracted.

4. Don’t Use Duolingo

A lot of people hate on Duolingo as a learning resource, and I am one of those people

I used Duolingo for about two weeks daily before I decided to stop

The main problem I found was that Duolingo focuses on translating random sentences. While that can be useful for beginners, it didn’t help me learn how to actually use the language in real-life situations. There’s little focus on dialogues, grammar, listening, speaking, or authentic cultural context.

For me, Duolingo was  too easy and almost like doing grammar exercises from a textbook without the explanation of the rules. 

I also think the streak system gave me a false sense of progress. It made me feel like I was learning, but in reality, I wasn’t challenging myself at all during that time.

It’s not that you can’t learn anything from Duolingo, but I believe that every other method I used to learn helped me far more in developing real fluency

It can be a useful starting point for absolute beginners, But I found it very unhelpful in developing fluency

5. Get A Great Teacher, Be a Great Student

I worked with a teacher to get live feedback on my pronunciation, grammar, and speaking skills. 

This is a quote from Atomic Habits

“ Reflection and review enables the long-term improvement of all habits because it makes you aware of your mistakes and helps you consider possible paths for improvement. Without reflection, we can make excuses, create rationalizations, and lie to ourselves. We have no process for determining whether we are performing better or worse compared to yesterday.” 

And this is exactly why I got a teacher, to avoid falling complacent. 

But finding the right teacher isn’t easy. I went through four teachers before I found one that I though was great. 

And these are my requirements for finding a good teacher,

1. They need to be fluent, ideally a native speaker. Believe it or not, two of the four teachers I tried weren’t fluent in French. Yes they spoke French, but they often had to think hard to find simple words, couldn’t really explain the rules of the language, and spoke a lot of English to me. All of these are red flags in a teacher

2. They need to be adaptive to you, no cookie cutter programs. Your teacher really should not be beginning teaching you anything without understanding what you want to learn and your current language level. And they should make custom learning sessions dependent on what you want to learn and as well as what they think you NEED to learn. They should help you achieve your goals and help you be aware of your blind spots

3. They Let you struggle, what I mean is that they don’t speak much english to you especially if youre past the beginner stage, They’ll let you wrestle with difficult sentences and find the right vocabulary on your own, then help you refine it.

4. They take notes for you, being able to review what you learned in the class after is incredibly valuable to your long term learning and any good teacher should know that

5. they give homework, and they explain the mistakes in the homework to you. Any good teacher will know that you will not learn a language in the few classes you take with them a week, you need to be practicing on your own to reinforce the things you learned in class
   
   Some other requirements: they’re passionate about teaching, show up on time, and can switch between academic and casual French with ease. But these arent as hard of Requirements as the previously mentioned
   

When you find a good teacher, they will be incredible in guiding your learning. They offer real-time feedback and help you get accustomed to hearing a native speaker.

The downside is that Teachers cost money. Rates can range from $5 to $100 per hour, but you should be able to find a great teacher for around $20–30 per hour. The bad teacher I had were below this range, something to think about

But the most important thing Even if you have a good teacher it means nothing if you are not a good student, in class you need to actually pay attention, when your teacher gives you homework there is 0 point to cheating through it just actually do it even if you get it wrong, when you are having trouble finding the right words keep pushing through even if it feels embarrassing thats how you learn, review the notes from the class after, practice the new stuff you learned in conversation

And that brings me to my last lesson is practice conversation early

6. Practice Conversation Early

The great thing about this is that you can practice conversation by yourself or with someone else

I do this a lot by myself, but I recently started doing a lot more conversation practice with my family

When I would do this by myself I would set up my camera, and try to speak French for 30 minutes uninterrupted, when I didn't know a word or phrase I’d fill it in with English and keep moving forward. 

You can have a fake conversation and practice asking questions to the camera, you can tell a story about your life, you can talk about your day, you can summarize a movie—the possibilities are endless

I would then rewatch the video write-down what I was trying to say in English, translate it to French, listen to the corrected version on deepL, (Pro tip use the deepL app instead of the web version so you can slow down the audio to a manageable speed),  write down everything in French and re-record myself reading the corrected version

This is far and away my favorite exercise because it completely incorporates the entire spectrum of language, speaking listening, reading, and writing

Its Great if you're shy and want to practice without talking to someone else, and its Flexible You can record yourself for 5 minutes or 5 hours. The general rule I follow is that for every minute you spend recording, you’ll spend about 3 minutes revising and re-recording—but it’s totally worth it. And remember:

La véritable maîtrise naît du courage d'accepter l'échec. Chaque faux pas est une leçon, une partie nécessaire de la croissance. Que tu consacres cinq minutes ou cinq heures par jour, l'important est la persévérance. Le pouvoir d'apprendre quoi que ce soit ne réside pas dans l'évitement des obstacles, mais dans le refus de les laisser t'arrêter. A bientot

Translation: True mastery comes from the courage to accept failure. Every misstep is a lesson, a necessary part of growth. Whether you devote five minutes or five hours a day, the important thing is perseverance. The power to learn anything lies not in avoiding obstacles, but in refusing to let them stop you. See you soon