The best free online resources for learning French

I am an avid language learner. I now speak about six and have studied several more. To help others who are facing the same difficulty of finding good learning material as I have gone through, I created lists of the resources I have used. Here are my recommended resources for French!

How to learn French for free online?

Language Transfer on YouTube
I am big fan of a YouTube channel called Language Transfer. I have used it for Spanish, Arabic and Italian, and I would listen to an episode mostly every morning while getting dressed or at night while cooking. Language Transfer’s method for learning is termed the “Thinking Method” which means that you are remembering grammar and vocabulary not just by simply memorizing it but by understanding the logic behind it. It does so by transferring the knowledge you already have from other languages to your target language. Remembering, then, becomes a way of following a mental process of logic steps, which both makes it easier to trace things back if forgotten and provides you with a better understanding of the language. This works especially well between English and Latin languages, because you can ‘transfer’ a lot of words from one to the other (grâce à William the Conquerer).

Frequency dictionary
Following a list of the most frequently used words in a language is a very efficient way to learn important vocabulary. This list also features example sentences for every word.

Learn with Oliver
If you make an account on this website, you can opt for a great daily or weekly newsletter with new words and example sentences at your own level.

Extra French on Youtube
This is a silly but entertaining educational series available in a couple of languages, especially designed for language learners. It’s about a group of friends and their adolescent problems and attempts to find love. The difficulty of the dialogues (all subtitled) is increasing with every episode and it thus works great as a support to regular studying.

Journal en français facile
The daily news but in “easy” French (not really easy still, I must admit).

Duolingo French
I never recommend Duolingo as a main source for starting a language as in my opinion it doesn’t focus enough on grammar, but for me it works wonderfully as a support to regular lessons and as a tool to keep in touch with the language when you’re not actively studying it.

Readlang
Reading in another language is effective for learning but not much fun if you have to look up every other word. This application called Readlang is a great free addition to your browser that gives a translation simply by clicking on a word. Even better: it saves those words (and the sentence in which they appear) for later review as flashcards.

Spotify playlist of French songs
If you use Spotify, give my favorite French songs a try!