A French study plan that survives a full-time job
Most beginner plans assume you have unlimited evenings. This one assumes you have about thirty-five minutes and some of them will be on a bus.
The daily shape
| Minutes | What | Why |
|---|---|---|
| 15 | One structured lesson | New material in an order that builds |
| 10 | Spaced-repetition vocabulary | Stops last week evaporating |
| 5 | Speaking aloud | The skill you will otherwise avoid |
| 5–10 | Listening | Slowest to move, so it starts earliest |
Thirty-five to forty minutes. Not two hours — a plan you abandon in week three teaches you nothing.
Why daily beats weekend
Language is consolidated during sleep. Seven thirty-minute sessions and one three-and-a-half hour session are the same total time, and they are not remotely the same result — the first gives your brain seven nights to file the material, the second gives it one.
This is also why spaced repetition matters more for beginners than for anyone else. At fifty words you can hold them all in your head. At five hundred you cannot, and the ones you learned in month one quietly disappear unless something brings them back on a schedule.
What to skip
- Exam practice papers, for now. They measure a level you have not built. Come back to them at the end of Stage 5.
- Verb conjugation tables memorised in isolation. Learn je suis, tu es, il est inside sentences you would actually say. Tables recite; sentences transfer.
- A second app. Two half-finished courses is the most common way beginners waste six months. Finish one path.
- Grammar terminology. You do not need to know what the subjunctive is called. You need to know that il faut que je sois is correct.
Month by month, roughly
| Month | Where you should be |
|---|---|
| 1 | Stage 1–2. Greetings, numbers, ordering, prices, telling the time. |
| 2–3 | Stage 3–4. Present and past tense, directions, housing, work, health. |
| 4–5 | Stage 5. Opinions, future and conditional, formal letters. |
| 6 | Stage 6, then the exam formats and your first timed papers. |
Working estimates at 30–40 minutes a day. Faster if you can give it more; slower is fine as long as it is daily.
When to switch to exam mode
When you can read a short French news item and get the gist without a dictionary. Before that, timed papers mostly measure your frustration.
Once you switch, the app changes job entirely: it starts measuring all four skills against the NCLC 7 line and telling you which one to fix — here is exactly how that is calculated.
Try the first lessons free
Three days free, with everything unlocked. A card starts the trial; cancel before day 3 and you pay nothing.
A card is needed to start the trial. Nothing is charged for 3 days, and you can cancel in one click.
Related
Formats, points and immigration thresholds change. Confirm current requirements with the official test provider and with IRCC before you plan around them. This is exam preparation, not immigration advice.