My goals

• I want to connect with people better - Whenever I meet new people, I try to guess where they’re from. If I know a few words of their language, I try to speak them, and I immediately see how they light up ¹. I get happier when I make other people happy 🙂.
• It’s a fun activity to do - It’s a hobby, and I look forward to practicing it, which is important for motivation.

Why French?

I decided to learn French because:

• I like how it sounds when people speak it - It sounds so melodic and romantic.
• I like to listen to songs in French - This is related to how it sounds. I became more interested in French when I got a recommendation for the song “Santé” from “Spill Tab” ². Since then, I started enjoying listening to French music with indie pop artists like Claire Laffut and Vendredi sur Mer , and music from the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s like Charles Aznavour , Sylvie Vartan , Marie Laforêt , and Joe Dassin ³.
• I’m interested in the French culture - I love traveling and getting to know new cultures. I picked French because French cultural activities match my lifestyle. French people are known for their love of food, their good manners, their love for reading (9/10 French people read at least one book per year), and how they enjoy their leisure time (flânerie is the art of aimlessly strolling through the city streets).

In my journey, I have realized that:

• I can only learn the language through discipline - Like learning any other skill, it requires me to be consistent. This means practicing whenever I have the opportunity. Some days I might not feel like learning it, but I know that just trying for a few minutes will help; in other words, even if I don’t have the motivation to practice, I do it anyway.
• You get as much as you put in - Regardless of the method I use, I’m not going to learn it if I don’t practice it enough.
• I want to be fluent in a conversational setting - I want to speak a language comfortably in a conversational setting; I’m not that interested in learning how to write it perfectly (although it helps).
• Having an imperfect accent is okay - I acknowledge that I have an accent when I speak, and that’s okay; my accent is what makes me unique. My goal is for the person or people I’m talking to to understand me, and if they can, then that’s it. Having an accent is not an excuse to stop learning other aspects of the language, though; I do put effort into learning new words and memorizing the gender of nouns.

The Power of Comprehensible Input

When I decided to learn French, I did what most people would probably do: search online for recommended methods and try them, like reading a beginner’s “Learn French” book, listening to audiobooks where a teacher teaches French grammar rules in English, or enrolling in a language learning school⁴. Unfortunately, after a few months of trying all of these methods, I got frustrated and felt that I was not making any significant progress.

One day, YouTube recommended a video that changed the way I thought about learning a language. It’s a lecture from Stephen Krashen on Language Acquisition and Comprehensible Input .

I think Stephen’s strategy makes sense. When we grow up and learn our first language, we go through a silent period where we’re primarily listening to what our parents tell us and how we see our environment being described before we can speak the language.

The following is a great example of comprehensible input.

Progression

Thanks to Stephen’s video, I changed my “initial” strategy:

• I focused on listening to and watching audiovisual content in French.
• I listened to podcasts with an interactive transcription where I could see the meaning of new words.
• I spent less time practicing my speaking skills.
• I spent less time learning grammar rules such as verb conjugations and tenses.

After a few weeks/months of trying this out, I noticed I was starting to understand new words here and there (simply because it’s natural for the most common words in a spoken language to appear most frequently in casual conversation). Then I realized that I no longer needed to think about the right conjugation for a word because it somehow just came to mind after lots of reading/listening.

After I understood a lot of what I read or listened to, I knew it was time to speak and to learn grammar in a structured way.

My intermediate strategy:

• I started speaking as much as possible using Tandem, Preply,
• I started learning grammar in a structured way.

I use Preply at least once a week, where I only focus on practicing my speaking skills. I go to a French meetup to practice in person⁵, and I practice at work with a Francophone friend during breakfast.

It’s very important to learn the grammar for both listening and speaking. For example, in French, I’d always wonder what y and en meant in some sentences. After watching this video I learned that it refers to a previously mentioned place.

It’s actually not hard to find a program to learn grammar in a structured way, following Iclal’s advice , I searched for playlists and found Learn French with Alexa ’s playlist perfect.

I reached a point where I’m actively practicing grammar, vocabulary (new and existing words) and speaking the language whenever I have the chance.

Next on my journey is a visit to France for some immersion time to practice speaking and listening to French every day.

Self learning tools

I use the following tools:

• Youtube
  • I look for videos in French that have subtitles in both French and English on a topic I’m interested in. Initially, it was very simple content about everyday activities . Now, I combine that and podcasts about topics I’m interested in.
  • My favorite channels are:
    • French In Motion
    • French With Panache
    • Easy French
    • French Facile 12
    • Learn French With Alexa
• Readlang
  • Readlang is my favorite tool for practicing reading and listening.
  • I like that the transcription is interactive; if I don’t know a word, I can click/tap on it, and it’ll highlight it and save it on its database (with the translation and the surrounding context).
  • It’s web-based, so I can access it from my phone and my laptop without installing any software.
  • It’s very affordable compared to similar tools like LingQ (just ~$50 US per year) and also has a free version.
• Anki
  • To practice new words through spaced repetition. It’s a great complementary tool to Readlang.
• Linguno
  • I use it to practice verb conjugation and refine my French. I wouldn’t recommend using it when starting out.

My learning process through podcasts

My current setup involves podcasts, Readlang and Anki:

• I search for a podcast on a topic that I like in the channels above and import it to Readlang.
  • Download the audio (I use yt-dlp -x --audio-format mp3 "<youtube-link>").
  • Upload the mp3 to https://readlang.com/upload and sync the audio with a Youtube video
• I start a lesson in Readlang and learn new words by clicking/tapping on them.

Spaced Repetition

I use spaced repetition to review words and phrases that I just learned or that I want to learn.

• In Readlang, I export new phrases/words that I’ve learned to an Anki-compatible file.
  • Go to https://readlang.com/words , select all words, and export them.
  • Export settings:
    • Content to export: Context (Anki cloze with translation), word frequency.
    • Delimiter: Semicolon
• I upload the file to Anki desktop and synchronize it.
  • Import file >
    • Import Options >
      • Note file: cloze
      • Deck: My French words and phrases
      • Existing notes: update
    • Field mapping
      • Text: map to “1: "
      • Frequency: map to “2:”
  • Click on Sync to synchronize.

Now the words are in my Anki cloud account. On my phone, I open Anki, synchronize the words, and have daily sessions where I practice the words I’ve learned and their meanings with enough context to make sense of them.

Learning grammar with examples

I follow a structured grammar program generated with AI. I asked Gemini with Deep Research to figure out a plan to learn grammar for my current level and it created a very detailed document with a step by step grammar program.

For any grammar topic that I want to learn in depth I learn by example and with spaced repetition. I use the following prompt to generate examples for Anki.

**Subject:** French Grammar Anki Card Generation

**Topics:**

\`\`\`
[PASTE YOUR LEARNING TOPICS HERE]
\`\`\`

**Task:** Based *only* on the topics provided above, generate a list of examples for each concept and sub-concept.

**Rules for Generation:**

1. **Quantity:** Generate at least **50 examples** for *each* major concept listed.
2. **Complexity:** The examples must have varied complexity: include simple, intermediate, and very hard sentences.
3. **Format:** Generate a CSV file with **no header row** and use a **semicolon (;) as the separator**.
4. **Columns:** The CSV must have exactly three columns: `Text`, `Frequency`, `Context`.

**Column-Specific Instructions:**

**1\. `Text` Column:**

* **Format:** Must use the Anki cloze format: `{{c1::Phrase in French::meaning in English}}`.
* **Content:** The cloze deletion *must* be a full sentence in French, or at least a complete clause
  that makes sense on its own.
* **Conversational Context:** To provide a real-life conversational setting, you must add 1-2 short
  supporting sentences before and after the main sentence.
  * **Crucially:** These extra context sentences must be *outside* the `{{c1::...}}` cloze block.
  * **Example:** `Salut ça va ? {{c1::Je vais bien::I am doing well}}, merci.` (Here, `Salut ça va ?`
    is the conversational context).

**2\. `Frequency` Column:**

* **Content:** A number between **1** and **100**.
* **Meaning:** **1** \= this exact phrase is *highly likely* to be used in daily conversation. **100** \=
  this phrase is grammatically correct but *highly unlikely* to be used (e.g., very formal, obscure, or overly complex).

**3\. `Context` Column:**

* **Content:** A detailed explanation of the grammar rule being demonstrated in the `Text` field.
* **Clarity:** Explain *why* the specific form was used (e.g., "The adjective 'petite' is used because it must agree
  in gender (feminine) and number (singular) with the noun 'fille'").
* **Restriction:** **DO NOT** add *any* sources, pointers to sources, or references to lesson numbers (e.g., "L33").
  The explanation must stand on its own.

The output looks like this:

Qui es-tu ? {{c1::Je suis::I am}} étudiant à l'université.;1;This uses the present tense conjugation of the irregular verb *Être* (to be) for the first-person singular subject 'je'.
Tu as l'air fatigué. {{c1::Oui, je suis::Yes, I am}} un peu malade.;1;This uses the present tense conjugation of *Être* for the first-person singular 'je'.
...

I save the output to a file and import the file to Anki.

The Ultimate Immersion: Traveling

I’m at a point where I could travel to France and immerse myself in the culture and the language. Immersion will definitely accelerate my speaking skills.

Conclusion

Learning a language by applying the comprehensible input method accelerated my progress. None of it would have been possible without putting effort every time that I can. Discipline and consistency are the key.