Your learn French plan, from bonjour to real conversations
French looks familiar on paper and sounds like nothing you studied once people start talking. Silent letters, liaison and two past tenses trip up most learners. With this prompt your todo.is agent plans your weeks so listening and pronunciation come first, grammar arrives in a useful order, and you get small daily tasks plus a weekly check-in.
The prompt
- Plan how I learn French over [NUMBER OF WEEKS] weeks. I am at [CURRENT LEVEL] and I need French for [GOAL]. I can study [TIME PER DAY] a day, mostly [WHEN AND WHERE]. Start with pronunciation (nasal vowels, the French r, silent endings, liaison), then the present tense, the near future (aller + infinitive), the passé composé with avoir and être, and the imparfait. Give each day a 5-minute listening task from free French media with a link, a short grammar point and 8 new words. Make a Word document with the full plan and a printable one-page cheat sheet of verb endings, email it to me, and every Monday at 7:30 send me the week on Telegram.
What to change
- [NUMBER OF WEEKS]: E.g. "10" or "until my move in March".
- [CURRENT LEVEL]: E.g. "zero", "two years at school long ago" or "A2, I understand more than I speak".
- [GOAL]: E.g. "living in Lyon", "the DELF B1", "work calls with our Paris office" or "reading novels".
- [TIME PER DAY]: E.g. "25 minutes".
- [WHEN AND WHERE]: E.g. "on the train with headphones" so the agent picks audio-heavy tasks, or "at my desk".
Example result
- Learn French in 10 weeks: false beginner to A2
- Goal: moving to Lyon · 25 minutes a day on the train · listening-heavy
- Weeks 1 to 2: hear and say it right
- • Nasal vowels: on (bon), an/en (temps), in (vin). Learn to hear the three apart before anything else.
- • Silent endings: most final consonants are silent (petit, grand), except often c, r, f, l (think "careful")
- • Liaison: les amis sounds like lay-za-mee
- • Present tense of être, avoir, aller, faire
- • Words: greetings, café and bakery, numbers (watch soixante-dix = 70)
- Weeks 3 to 4: everyday life
- • Regular -er verbs (parler, habiter) and the most common irregulars (prendre, venir, pouvoir, vouloir)
- • aller + infinitive for plans: je vais chercher un appartement
- • Questions three ways: tu habites où ? / est-ce que tu habites ici ? / où habites-tu ?
- • Words: housing, transport, the doctor's office
- Weeks 5 to 7: the past
- • Passé composé with avoir (j'ai mangé) and with être for movement verbs and reflexives (je suis allée, je me suis levé)
- • Imparfait for descriptions and habits: il faisait beau, j'habitais à Londres
- • Rule of thumb: passé composé moves the story forward, imparfait sets the scene
- Weeks 8 to 10: speak more
- • Pronouns y and en (j'y vais, j'en veux deux)
- • Spoken French: on instead of nous, dropping ne (je sais pas)
- • Two conversation sessions a week, 20 minutes, with a tutor or exchange partner
- Sample Monday (week 5)
- • Listen: 5 minutes of a slow French news podcast, note 3 verbs in the past
- • Grammar: which 16 verbs take être in the passé composé
- • Words: 8 moving-house words (le bail, la caution, l'état des lieux…)
- • Say out loud: what you did last weekend in 4 sentences
How to do it with todo.is
- Fill in how many weeks you have, your level and why you want French.
- Paste the to-do into todo.is or send it to your agent on Telegram or WhatsApp.
- You get a Word plan and a one-page verb cheat sheet by email, then the week's tasks every Monday.
- Tell your agent when a topic is too slow or too fast, or ask it to add a DELF practice block near the end.
Tips for a better result
- Train your ear before your grammar. French spelling hides a lot, and listening early stops bad pronunciation habits.
- Learn nouns with their article (le livre, la table). Guessing gender later is much harder.
- Spoken French drops ne and uses on all the time. Learn both forms so you understand real people.
- Ask your agent for an MP3 of each week's words read slowly, so you can practise on your commute.
learn French plan: FAQ
- How long does it take to learn French? Many English speakers reach basic conversation in 4 to 6 months with 30 minutes a day. A comfortable B2 level usually takes one to two years.
- Is French pronunciation really that hard? It feels hard because spelling and sound do not match, but the rules are consistent. A few weeks of focused listening on nasal vowels and silent endings helps a lot.
- Should I learn the passé simple? Only to recognise it in books. People do not use it when speaking, so the passé composé and imparfait come first.
- Can the plan prepare me for the DELF? Yes. Say the level and date in the goal, and your agent adds timed practice for the four parts of the exam.
JavaScript is required to use the todo.is app.