When people ask the question “Is French Easy to Learn For English Speakers?” It’s common to refer to the US Foreign Service Institute to find out.French is in what the FSI calls ‘Group One’. It’s the group with the easiest languages. This means that with about 600 hours in French class, you would essentially have basic fluency.How does 600 hours break down? You could reach 600 hours after having spent 12 hours a week in the classroom for 50 weeks. That means about one year of steady, consistent learning.For a monolingual English speaker, French is easier than Group Two languages, such as Greek, Group Three languages such as Finnish, and Group Four languages such as Japanese.

So How Easy is it to Really Learn French?

Beyond a simple answer from the FSI telling us about how many hours we need in a classroom, let’s look at some factors that will be important to really determine how easy it is to learn French. These factors include: motivation, study habits, and environment. If you have these three in combination, learning French will be easy. If you don’t learning French may be difficult.MotivationIf you don’t have motivation, it won’t be easy to learn French. Why are you learning French? If you don’t have a good reason or don’t know why you’re learning it, learning French will be difficult for you.If you’re highly motivated already, then learning French will be easiest for you.If your motivation level isn’t high enough, then boost it by doing some visualization. Picture what it will feel like to speak fluent French. How will it change or improve your life?Why do you want to learn French in the first place? If you have a strong reason to learn French, then nothing is going to get in your way.Study HabitsKnow the 80/20 principle. This is the Pareto Principle that 80% of your success will come from 20% of your efforts. Make a record of how you spend your time studying French and take note of what is effective for you. Each language learner is different and what works for some may not work for others.Do you study French with the TV on, with notifications on your devices buzzing and ringing in telling you about social media updates and email messages arriving into your inbox? If so, it will be harder for you to learn French. The effective way to study French is to turn off all such notifications and concentrate only on learning French.Make sure to divide your time learning French into skills that develop all four areas: listening, speaking, reading, and writing.ReadingIt’s a good idea to diversify your learning methods. Sometimes grab a physical book or magazine. Comic books and children’s books are two good ways to get started with reading French. If you're a beginner, you can improve your reading in short bits by browsing Hi Native and seeing corrections to other people's French. You can also practice texting French to others with apps such as Hello Talk, Tandem and Amikumu.ListeningOther times, head to a language-learning website or app such as LingQ where you can find all levels of French materials. Here you can listen to French while reading texts. It’s a big help for your listening comprehension skills. This is a strong point about LingQ because you can work on two skills at the same time if you wish.You'll also want to check out French videos on YouTube. Listening to French is easier when you have the visuals of a video.Download the app France 24 to your tablet and watch the French news on a regular basis.SpeakingWhen it comes to speaking French, one thing that is for sure is that you want to have the best accent possible. That’s why we have a guide with some French pronunciation tips.You'll want to get as much practice speaking as you can. Try to find somebody who will listen to you without interrupting you when you make a mistake, but who will at the end of it all, tell you what kinds of mistakes you make.Writing This is likely the hardest part of learning French, because every spelling mistake and grammatical error stands out as if its carved in stone. For a beginner, it’s also the least important part of learning French because your aim is to talk to people to be understood and to understand other people talking. At the beginning stage, you are unlikely to write anything longer than a text message. Since there is auto-correct when you add French to your user settings, you won’t have too much difficulty with this.When you’re farther along, you’ll find you will have to spend a lot of time to learn new ways of structuring sentences and employ grammatical structures that are non-existent in English.Set the Right Environment to Study FrenchEach exclusive French interval can be anywhere from ten minutes to 45 minutes. It should be not be interrupted by any other activity. Each time you want to study French, you need to dedicate time and focus exclusively to learning French.Make a Plan Learning French will be easier if you set a plan. Are you going to be learning French on your own?Learning a new language can be expensive, but it doesn’t have to be. Is money an issue? Consider getting a jump start with these teachers who teach you French for free online.Do you want to learn the language online or in person? If you live in a city with an Institut Français or Alliance Française, then you will find classes in person. Also your local school district, community college, and university will likely have a continuing education program where you can find French classes in person.How you choose to learn French depends on your own time commitment and schedule.If you have the time and budget, an immersion program is the most effective way to learn French.So How Easy is it to Learn French for English Speakers?The answer to this question depends on you. Although French is classified as a level one language by the FSI, your individual motivation and study methods are the most important factors.Learning a new language requires confidence and motivation. You’re going to make mistakes and have a bad accent. It’s can be frustrating to get beyond that.Unless you’re in an immersion program where French is the only language allowed 24/7, you’re going to have to push yourself. You can’t just go to class and expect to learn French. You need to make sure to spend time studying and make sure to use French regularly outside the classroom.As we mentioned, the combination of motivation, study habits, and environment are the key to your success in learning French. If you’re missing these, you won’t have an easy time learning French. Motivation is the key to help you make sure you have the discipline of studying regularly and that you establish a conducive study environment for you to focus on your French learning undisturbed.