I taught myself French to C2 level, so here is how I think you should learn it

wait, let me guess.. you wanna learn French but don't know where to start? don't worry because im gonna explain it all to you in this video! hello it's iclal and in this video I'm going to tell you how I taught myself French for the last 8 years and how you can do the same thing completely for free if it's your first time on my channel I'm a 20 year old Turkish girl who is also a polyglot and I've been learning French since 2016 right now I hold both C1 and C2 certificates in French no I

haven't lived there I haven't studied there I have spent two days in Paris two days in Belgium, and a night in French-speaking Switzerland so no that's not an excuse!! actually tomorrow I'm going to Paris for the second time and I'm quite excited I haven't even taken a French class all this time so it was mostly for free that I Learned French and completely online, so in this video I'm gonna reveal all of my tricks and secrets let's get right into it to start with I think my French learning wasn't quite effective at the beginning because

for the first two or three years the only thing that I knew how to say was and that was it and that was me spending all of my time with French and making French my entire personality because I was just aiming to learn this language through language acquisition like a baby because babies only listen to languages they don't make any efforts then at some point I told myself I should probably be taking things more seriously like it doesn't look like I'm going to learn French only by listening to songs so it was actually only in

2018 that I started to learn French in a way that we all understand it then during the lockdown I worked a lot on my French but it was the last time in my life I prioritised French because I started learning Italian and Spanish during the lockdown then in 2022 I got my French C1 certificate which was my first language certificate ever then I was planning to study in France I got accepted from Pantheon Assas I got accepted from Lille but then I thought that it would be a better decision to study in Italy in June

I passed the French C2 exam because right now my level is actually C2 so if you're someone who wants to learn French online how you can learn it without making the same mistakes as I did so I think there are a lot of things and I just made a list of uh topics that I should talk about in this video in my notion here I think the topic is just um a little bit too broad but anyway I have a few points that I should be covering in this video so let's start by how we

should be um actually making the first steps into the French language I think when we want to learn a language online we should be compensating in some way the lack of a professional guidance because when people learn languages at school or at language courses they have a teacher who actually knows what to do and who has a structured learning style even if I find it most of the times a bit restrictive so when you're learning a language all alone you don't have the structure no one tells you that you should be learning this tense after

that one tense no one tells you what you should be learning next and I think that's the most confusing part about being a self learner basically when I want to learn a language the first thing I do is when you make this search you're going to find the related content but the thing is you're going to click on playlists so now the playlists that you have here are like a structured French course and if I had to highlight one playlist on YouTube basically the one that I used to cover the French basics it's the French

essential course of Learn French with Alexa like I was listening to this back in 2018 but I just took a look at YouTube and I couldn't find something as complete as this there are a lot of good French teaching channels on YouTube but I think this is the most complete comprehensive playlist from which one could learn A1 and A2 levels so basically here she starts with like alphabet greetings days of the week months of the year and then she comes to articles because it's quite important you have no idea you should be learning this and

then she starts with basic verb conjugations which I find really really important so if I was you, basically that's what I did I would take a French notebook and I would follow her videos as if she was my French teacher by taking notes of everything and giving myself the actual time to revise things and to internalize the information because you are learning a new language your brain has to acknowledge an entire different system of communication of expressing yourself and it's not an easy task so please take your time while watching this kind of content or

learning things why I like her videos other than they are really structured is that she gets you to um making sentences or speaking quite quickly I can say because many of you while learning languages you guys make a great mistake that you don't realise because basically that's the way of learning languages that you were used to back in school like let's say you are just memorizing vocabulary lists or learning vocabulary around the topic without getting any context like just imagine does this sound like a speech to you apples orange avocado watermelon grapes but instead if

you just know the verbs you can say that's basically what she teaches you on her channel because from a linguistic point of view French isn't the most complicated language if you speak English you won't have difficulties with the structure you can basically start making French sentences just work on it learn as many verbs as you can in present tense then amplify your vocabulary and then start making sentences add new information you should be just making those longer sentences and amplifying your knowledge at the same time then also I'm going to recommend you a website so

this is Le Point du Fle which is basically the French archive on the internet every French exercise every French video is here divided into topics but I think only French teachers know about this website which literally annoys me on a regular basis anyway when you go here you're just going to click on Apprendre le Francais the content for learning French and then you are going to go to topic that you want to learn about you can hear practice your listening you can choose your level and you can do the exercises those content are either upload

by French teachers or directly taken from YouTube something else I know is that French grammar is extremely frustrating for many of you because it's a romance language and romance languages have this reputation of having an unbelievable amount of exceptions in grammar rules but you can actually manage to learn many of them and in French especially for verb conjugations there is one tip that I have get a small French notebook that you're only going to use for conjugation but some of you just get this wrong and you try to create your new Beschrelle you don't have

to do this what you're going to do is if you have some verb you're going to take it for example in French there are three groups of verbs those are all first group and once you learn how to conjugate the first group verbs you're going to write like eh voila you don't have to do it like no this is not the information that you are looking for you can't learn all the French tenses at the same time you just have to start with present tense then go in the order uh full of some kind of

structured material like YouTube playlists like your language course like French books that you find you can get the most logical order of learning French grammar by the way when it comes to French books I haven't used any books that you can't find on the internet so if you want to get some help for grammar something to just revise the things a bit just search for PDFs on the internet honestly that's what I did I haven't bought any French textbooks unless it was in order to prepare for the French exams so I think you can find

pretty much everything you want on the internet after learning your first few tenses and amplifying your vocabulary a bit you will realize that you're slowly becoming an intermediate in French and that's a crucial point because of the intermediate plateau that we call you will have the impression that you don't know anything once again but don't worry because I think most of the intermediate level is about repeatedly watching content every French teacher on YouTube does this they make French videos with French subtitles comprehensible input in French you can also search like this kind of videos are

going to help you with French subtitles first time maybe you don't understand everything or you're like I can understand but I'm far away from speaking like this which is quite normal the only thing that you have to at this point is if necessary watching the same video for 5 times until you understand everything just follow subtitles translate them if you need translate the words that you don't know note some structures note some expressions and then watch it again and again I think what many people are getting wrong at B1 and B2 level is you don't

consume enough content you basically um just still act like you are a beginner learner and also get some help from English because as your French improves you will realise how much English and French share this is really going to help you improve your French skills and sound more advanced while speaking it this is going to happen by time but it's literally exclusively depends on you consuming content when I was an intermediate in French I just listened to a lot of podcasts I watched a lot of YouTube videos from the type that I told you about

and then I wrote about them or I talked about them using the same vocabulary that they use in that content in that way you are not only uh someone who just passively consumes content and who just improves their understanding then asking themselves why can't I speak French because you don't make any efforts to produce something in this language and something else that I'd like to highlight for intermediate French learners is especially the website tv5monde because there are a lot of videos with exercises which I think are always a bit more difficult than the indicated level

on the website so if you're like I'm finally intermediate and just come and just try to watch the intermediate videos here maybe you're going to have some difficulties but know that that's quite normal because those are real authentic French content if you're having difficulty just maybe go to A2 and that doesn't mean anything bad about your learning that doesn't mean that um you're not doing good that you are below of your level no I think those content are just bit falsely tagged I don't know so I would actually sincerely recommend someone to use it because

you will be at the same time consuming authentic French media and also learn some kind of really important vocabulary which is a bit more of niche you know not like the vocabulary classic things that you have on YouTube but a lot of different topics with ready exercises which I think is a great material one thing you should be keeping in mind is that I know when I just tell you what to do it sounds quite easy but this is a matter of maybe like two years it's okay if you're learning French since a year and

you haven't reached B1 that's literally the most normal thing that could happen to someone because I didn't even reach A1 after three years of learning and right now look where I am okay now let's talk about I feel like I'm a solid intermediate in French I know most of the verb tenses I can actually talk about many topics sometimes I have difficulty talking with natives or watching Netflix because that's quite difficult but most of the time I feel quite ''at ease'' with the French language okay let's take you to B2+ / advanced level this is

a question I get often which I obviously can't reply in this video because it's a different topic but anyway how do we get advanced level in language I don't think C1 and C2 should be like the ultimate goals of language learning B2 should be the limit because if you have B2 you should be able to do most of the things that you want with that language C1 means you have expertise in that language it's like as if you studied French at university C2 is the most extra thing ever like you shouldn't be aiming for C2

from now on but if you feel like no I want to hold that C1 certificate one day even if it's going to be after five years my way into C1 started in 2020 during the lockdown that was when I stopped studying French because at that point I basically knew all the grammatical topics and everything so I started studying things in French I started taking you know like around lockdown there were always this ''you can take online courses from this and that platform'' I did all that stuff in French so I was basically taking random courses

about history about philosophy about anything you can imagine in French I was taking notes I was watching the lectures that's probably what kind of built my French C1 then I started reading French books classical books mostly so in order to reach C1 you should have something that you are specialized at if you are working, if you are studying just try to learn about your discipline in French that's what's going to take you to C1 because in the past even French exams had this classification like you could choose if you want to take social sciences exam

or sciences exam right now it's not like that at my C2 exam I had first a topic about animal breeding and animal well being in general and then I had a topic about journalism I should have been able to choose if I want to get like positive sciences or social sciences because it's quite normal if I don't have the scientific vocabulary for French even if I'm taking the C2 exam because C2 is literally you are specialized in something and it's most probably going to be what's your what's your learning I'm a political science student and

writing that five pages about journalism was literally pure joy but talking about animal breeding okay I know French but what can I say to you about that I don't have the specific impressive C2 vocabulary that's the thing and you are not supposed to have that because C1-C2 those are quite specific if you're an engineer, if you can read about your field in French, if you can watch something join some kind of events that's already great. so I think at the end that's how I learnt French basically thanks to my greatest friend internet it's great if

you have a language course it's great if you have people to support you but also it's okay if you don't have like I quite literally don't have any French friends I had no French friends that I could go up to when I received my C2 certificate so stop procrastinating and just start working on things because I know it's quite comforting and motivating to listen to advice or people who have already achieved what you wanna achieve but at some point you should start out thanks for watching my video and hopefully it encouraged you to work on

your French skills a bit or if you were feeling lost hopefully right now you have a bit more idea for today you can follow me on social media and also you can check my Spotify to get a lot of French songs and see you again on another video bye