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How to reach A1 in French: a realistic 12-week plan
What the first level of French actually asks of you, how long it takes, and how to split your time between vocabulary, grammar and real French, week by week.
A1 is the first level of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages, the CEFR. It is a modest goal, and that is good news: at A1 you don't need to understand French films or follow a conversation between two Parisians. You need to handle simple, predictable situations, slowly and with some help.
This guide explains what that means in practice, how long it usually takes, and how to organize your time so that every week moves you forward on all four skills, not just vocabulary. It is written by a native French speaker, and every resource in it was checked for the A1 level.
What A1 means in practice
According to the CEFR, an A1 speaker can understand and use familiar everyday expressions, introduce themselves and others, ask and answer simple questions about where they live, the people they know and the things they have, and interact in a simple way if the other person speaks slowly and is ready to help.
In real life, that looks like this: you can introduce yourself and your family, give your age, your job and your address, order in a café, buy something and ask the price, ask for directions and understand a short answer, talk about your day and what you like, and fill in a simple form.
The official exam, the DELF A1, tests exactly four skills: listening, reading, writing and speaking, each scored out of 25. That is a useful way to think about your own learning, even if you never take the exam.
How long does it take?
Estimates vary a lot. The Sorbonne's French course for international students counts 90 to 100 hours of study for A1, and many shorter programs plan less. It depends on what you already know (English speakers recognize many French words), on how regularly you work, and on how much you practice outside lessons.
A realistic rhythm is 45 to 75 minutes most days, for about 12 weeks, which adds up to 60 to 100 hours. Regularity matters more than intensity: 45 minutes every day beats five hours on Sunday, because your memory consolidates between sessions.
What you need to learn
Vocabulary. The A1 topics are the same in every course: greetings, yourself and your family, numbers, dates and time, your daily routine, the weather, your home, food and the restaurant, shopping, clothes, your body and health, your town, transport, work and school, and hobbies. Depending on the course, that is a few hundred to about a thousand words and set phrases, including ready-made sentences like « Je voudrais un café, s'il vous plaît » that you learn as a block.
Grammar. Subject pronouns, gender and articles, adjective agreement, the present tense of regular verbs and of the most common irregular ones (« être », « avoir », « aller », « faire »…), negation, questions, prepositions of place and time, partitive articles (« du », « de la »), the imperative, the near future (« je vais manger ») and a first contact with the passé composé.
Both have to be memorized, and this is where flashcards with spaced repetition help most: the app shows you each card again just before you would forget it, so you spend your time on what you don't know yet. Decades of research on the spacing effect show that reviews spread out over time are remembered better than the same time spent cramming (Cepeda et al., 2006).
The method, step by step
1Build vocabulary and grammar every day
Learn up to 20 new cards on most days and do your reviews every day. The number of reviews grows during the first weeks: after a while you may have 60 to 120 a day, sometimes more. If your reviews regularly take longer than 30 minutes, add fewer new cards instead of skipping reviews.
Three habits make the difference. Learn every noun with its article (« le pain », « la pomme »), because the gender rarely shows in the word. Make your cards ask you to produce the French, from English to French, rather than only recognize it. And say every answer out loud before you check it, which trains your pronunciation for free.
We made two free collections for exactly this, and the plan below follows them: French A1 Vocabulary, 1,017 cards in 24 themes, and French A1 Grammar, 563 cards with the rules and then exercises. Every card was reviewed by a native speaker. You can add them in one tap to Flashcards Master, our app for iPhone and iPad, which plans your reviews, or print every deck as a PDF.
Anki is also free, on computers and Android, but you will have to build your own decks or find shared ones, whose quality varies a lot.
2Read a little, from week 3
Reading is where the words you learn start to stick, because you see them again in context. Keep it short: at A1, even a book written for beginners is a lot to take on, so start around week 3 with short texts written for your level, and read each one twice, the second time out loud.
Kwiziq has free A1 texts written by French teachers, like « Marie en France » or « James se présente ». Most come with audio, you can click any phrase to see its translation, and each text ends with a comprehension exercise. No account needed to read.
Lingua.com has short A1 texts about everyday life, like « Je m'appelle Jessica », with multiple-choice questions and audio read by several native speakers.
3Listen every day
Listening is easy to neglect, and it takes time to build. Ten to fifteen minutes a day is enough, as long as it is every day.
Super Easy French, from the Easy French channel, is a good place to start: real people in France speak slowly about everyday life, with subtitles in French and English at the same time, so you can follow both. Start with the second video of the playlist: the first one is an introduction and is a bit harder.
TV5Monde Apprendre, from the French international TV channel, has free videos sorted by level, each with a transcript and short comprehension exercises written by French teachers. Choose the A1 level and do one a day.
Cartoons for children are also surprisingly good: everyday vocabulary, simple sentences and images that carry the meaning. Trotro, a little donkey, has all its episodes on its official YouTube channel, about three and a half minutes each: one a day is perfect. Peppa Pig in French is great material too. Its official channel only posts long compilations, but each one is a series of five-minute episodes: watch one or two, then stop.
4Write short messages
The DELF A1 writing paper has two tasks: filling in a form (name, nationality, address…) and writing a short message of at least 40 words, like a postcard or an invitation. That is exactly what to practice.
Start a tiny diary in the present tense, the one you learn first: three sentences a day about your day as it is now. For example: « Aujourd'hui, je travaille à la maison. Il fait froid. Ce soir, je vais au cinéma avec Paul. » Reuse the words you learned that week. It takes two minutes, and the past tense can wait until the last weeks of the plan.
To catch your mistakes, paste your text into LanguageTool, or install its browser extension: it underlines spelling and grammar mistakes and suggests a fix. The free version only does the basic checks, which is all you need at A1.
For real feedback, post your text on LangCorrect. It is free, it has writing topics for A1, and native French speakers correct it sentence by sentence, explaining why. In return, you are expected to correct a few texts in your native language: that is what keeps the site free, and it is a nice way to meet other learners.
Too shy to post in public? Your favorite AI assistant (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini…) makes a patient teacher. Try this prompt:
I am learning French at A1 level. Correct the text below. List each mistake with a short explanation in English, then give the corrected text without making it more advanced.
And if you run out of ideas:
Give me five simple A1 writing topics, with three questions each to help me write.
5Speak, even a little
Speaking is hard to practice alone, and it is the skill most learners put off. Don't wait until you feel ready: at A1, a few short exchanges a week are enough.
Start with shadowing: play a sentence from Super Easy French or a TV5Monde video, pause, and repeat it right after, copying the rhythm and the intonation. It feels strange for a day, then it becomes the easiest way to work on your accent.
Then find a language partner. On Tandem and HelloTalk, you create a profile with your native language and the one you are learning, and the app suggests French speakers who want to learn yours: you help them, they help you. You can chat, send voice messages and call, and both apps let your partner correct your messages right in the conversation. HelloTalk also has voice rooms, where you can just listen at first. Both are free, with optional paid features. Start with messages, then voice notes, then a short call, around week 7.
Shy, or no partner yet? Use the voice mode of an AI assistant and start with this:
Let's practice a DELF A1 role play. You are a baker in Paris and I am a customer. Speak slowly, use simple A1 French, and correct me after each answer.
If you can afford it, one 30-minute lesson a week with a tutor on italki or Preply gives you regular, personal feedback on your speaking. The DELF A1 oral lasts 5 to 7 minutes: answering questions about yourself, asking the examiner questions, and a short role play, like buying something in a shop. Practice those three situations out loud.
The 12-week plan
Here is how it fits together. The vocabulary and grammar decks of each week follow our two collections at 20 new cards a day, about 13 of vocabulary and 7 of grammar, and each week also gets a practice focus. If you use other material, follow the same order of topics.
- Every day: your reviews and about 10 minutes of listening.
- Most days: up to 20 new cards.
- Three times a week: a short text to read.
- Twice a week: three to five sentences to write.
- Once a week: a voice message, a role play or a conversation.
The practice focus of each week is the skill you push a little further that week, on top of this routine.
You don't need to add the decks one by one: each collection comes as a folder, so one tap adds the 24 vocabulary decks, and another the 18 grammar decks.
Common mistakes at A1
Learning nouns without their article. « Table » alone is useless: you need « la table », or you will guess the gender wrong every time.
Only recognizing, never producing. Understanding « la boulangerie » when you see it is not the same as saying it when you need bread. Make your cards ask for the French.
Adding too many new cards. Forty new cards a day feels fast for a week, then the reviews pile up and most people give up. Twenty a day, every day, gets you further.
Putting off listening and speaking. They are slower to build than vocabulary, which is exactly why they need to start early, a little every day.
How to know you have reached A1
Go through this list. If you can do almost everything on it, slowly and with a few mistakes, you have the A1 level.
To check it properly, use an official DELF A1 sample paper from France Éducation international, which runs the exam, for all four skills. You can score the listening and reading parts yourself, and ask a tutor, a teacher or a native speaker to review your writing and speaking.
That is also the right moment for your first book: a graded reader, written for learners with a limited vocabulary, like the Lire en français facile series from Hachette or « Sophie et Jean » by Sylvie Lainé, twenty very short stories. Other good next steps for A2: « Extr@ », a sitcom made for learners, and 1jour1actu, the news explained to French children.
Questions
How long does it take to reach A1 in French?
Estimates vary, up to 90 to 100 hours of study for the Sorbonne's French course. At 45 to 75 minutes most days, that is about 12 weeks.
Can you reach A1 on your own?
Yes for understanding, reading and writing simple French. Speaking is the hardest part to learn alone, so add a conversation partner or a tutor, even once a week.
Do I need to take the DELF A1?
No. It is useful if you need a certificate for a job, a visa or your studies. Otherwise, its free sample papers are a good way to check your level.
Are flashcards enough to reach A1?
No. They are a very efficient way to learn vocabulary and grammar, but A1 also means understanding and speaking, which take daily listening and some conversation.