How to Teach French to Beginners: 11 Essential Tips

Knowing where to start with teaching French to beginners is a challenge. Whether you’re a head of faculty in a school, a primary school teacher about to introduce the language, or self-employed as a French tutor, it can be hard to know where to begin.

Do you start with grammar? Basic conversation? A whole load of vocabulary? The key verbs? Planning how to teach French to beginners is not easy. Thankfully, we’re here to help!

In this article, we’ll talk you through some key French lesson ideas that will work for both adult learners and child learners. 

Ultimately, there is no single approach to successfully teaching French to beginners. A lot of the time, what works will depend on who you have in front of you. If you’ve got a motivated adult who wants to learn French for work or travel, you’d likely use a different approach than you would when teaching a class of beginner 10-year-olds.

Here are French lesson ideas and essential tips that will work for all ages and situations.

1. Create enthusiasm

If you think back to your own education, which lessons did you enjoy the most? I’d hazard a guess to say it was the subjects where the teachers were the most enthusiastic about their subject. 

I’ll let you in on a little secret. Despite going on to do a degree in French and Spanish and becoming a language teacher, I actually quit studying Spanish at the age of 13 after learning it for a year in school. Was it because I didn’t like the subject? 

Absolutely not. The sole reason for me giving up was down to the teacher. No one wants to work through 20 worksheets in silence, do they? Especially when you’re learning a language because you want to actually be able to speak it!

Our first tip on how to teach French to beginners, therefore, is to be enthusiastic. You’re clearly passionate about languages yourself, as you wouldn’t have ended up in this field otherwise! So, show that enthusiasm, be excited about the language, and this will rub off on your learners too.

2. Create variety

Going back to my first Spanish learning experience, aside from the lack of enthusiasm, it was the repetitiveness of the lessons that also impacted upon my decision to quit. 

It’s important that your French lessons are varied. Choose different activities and experiment with different techniques. Practise listening, reading, writing, and speaking – and vary how you approach each skill too. 

It’s ok to try something out and it doesn’t work; you’ll just know not to use that idea in the future. You actually never stop learning when you start teaching. 

3. Start with something useful

For a few years, in the secondary school I was in at the time, our first French lesson would be about pronunciation and phonics. After an hour, the children had learnt to read French words with accurate-enough pronunciation, but they barely knew what any of them meant. They certainly couldn’t tell you anything about themselves – which is often what a child wants to be able to do. 

It dawned on me that these eleven-year-olds would be going home to their parents who’d be asking what can you say in French? And they wouldn’t even have a single word.

My third tip, therefore, is to make that first lesson something useful. Teaching basic conversations and greetings has always been a solid foundation for anyone’s first lesson – so why change that?

4. Give them lots of things they can adapt

Building on tip #3, you can give your students lots of key verbs they can adapt.

Consider how many times a day you use the verbs I am, I have, I like, I don’t like, I do, and I want in English. Now, give these to your learners in French with a heap of useful nouns and adjectives and see what they can come up with. 

Yes, you’ll have to address finer points of grammar and accuracy later, but the main point is that they get to come up with a huge list of things they can say about themselves from barely any language at all!

5. Tailor your lessons to their interests

If you’re following a curriculum or specification, this might be a little trickier. However, no matter the course content, you’re always going to be able to tailor the learning to their interests in some way or another. This is especially true when teaching French to children and teenagers.

Instead of teaching people to describe the physical features and personalities of their family members, for example, you could get them to talk about their idols – or even characters from their favourite game like Minecraft. 

When teaching about likes and dislikes, go out of your way to find out what theirs really are and ask them. Instead of teaching the relatively simple j’aime faire de la danse (I like doing dancing), it’s not much more challenging to say j’aime faire de la danse sur TikTok (I like doing dancing on TikTok). 

6. Find out their motivations 

If you’re teaching people who have chosen to learn French, either as an exam class or as an adult, find out why. Knowing why people want to learn the language can help you tap into these motivations and create enthusiastic learners. 

If you’re wanting to know how to teach the French language at home for beginners in adulthood, knowing their reasons for learning can help you tailor your lessons to their needs. An adult learner, for example, probably is not motivated to learn how to describe their pets (though a child probably will be motivated by this). 

7. Make it fun

Even if your learners aren’t there by choice, making the learning fun can go a long way. The great thing about teaching French is that you can incorporate games into almost all aspects of learning.

Whether it’s vocabulary guessing games, pairs, role play, or a quiz. People soak up much more when they’re having fun!

8. Use music

There are some amazing French music artists out there and there are things that will suit all tastes. If you’re teaching young children, French nursery rhymes that have the same tunes as ones they are familiar with will work a treat. Here are some examples of great songs that also have a theme:

• Alouette, Gentille Alouette (good for naming body parts)
• Tête, épaules, genoux, pieds (head, shoulders, knees and toes – good for naming body parts)
• La fourmi m’a piqué la main (good for body parts and animals)
• Dans la ferme de Mathurin (Old McDonald had a farm – good for animals and animal noises)
• La famille tortue (good for naming family members)
• Vole papillon (good for learning the imperative)

Aside from nursery rhymes, there are plenty of French songs in all genres that your learners will love. Why not find out their tastes and use a song or two in the French lesson?

9. Make it purposeful

When learning is perceived as purposeful, it will be retained much more readily.

Planning a real trip (even with no intention of booking) will show students how useful their language learning will be. Using authentic resources like real restaurant menus and real weather forecasts will add an element of reality to the language.

10. Content not accuracy 

Too many people won’t try and speak French because they fear being laughed at. An important part of teaching French to beginners is trying to get rid of that idea. Encourage learners to not worry about making mistakes and just focus on being understood.

Unless you’re training them up to pass an exam, being understood is much more important than accuracy. After all, we understand people speaking broken English and are very grateful for them making the effort.

11. Rinse and repeat  

According to research from Harvard, it takes between 15 and 20 exposures to learn a new word. So, if you really want to embed learning, you’re going to have to make sure your learners see, hear and use the word at least fifteen times!

Don’t just present it in the same way, though. It’s easy to learn the answer to a question when it’s always presented in the same way. To really embed the knowledge and make it stick, you need to present it in different ways.

Final thoughts on teaching French to beginners

All eleven of these tips can be used with any age and stage of learner and by using some – or all – of them, they’ll soon start to grasp more of the language and see results. 

One thing you need to remember, however, is that teaching French is (or at least it just be) fun. No matter which strategies you use, it’s important for learners to feel a sense of achievement.

So, whether you’re teaching adults or a child, the lesson should always end with them feeling as though they’ve made progress.