Learn French

Where to start

First contact is the French course for anyone who has never used the language. If you are starting from nothing, this is the way in: the first greetings, then the sentences you need as soon as you arrive somewhere. The online course is 100% free.

The opening themes already give you something you can use. You greet people, you ask them to repeat, you introduce yourself. Before a stay in France or another French-speaking country, those scenes are the ones of arrival: a taxi or a platform, a table, a room, a request for help. You do not wait until you have “finished the course” to use them.

The course and its situations

The programme has seventeen chapters (the themes in the player), arranged in six levels, and a little over four hundred and twenty phrases. It is a course for travel and the first few days, aligned with CEFR level A1.

The themes follow the order of an arrival. You begin by saying hello and goodbye, answering yes or no, asking someone to repeat. Then come numbers and time, useful for a price, a platform or a room. Taxi and transportation let you say where you are going. Restaurant, bar and hotel cover the table, the bill and the booking. Family and feelings help you name someone close to you or say how you are. The last themes deal with the unexpected: you are lost, you are looking for someone, you ask for help.

Level A1, as the CEFR describes it

The Common European Framework of Reference puts A1 at the first step. An A1 speaker understands familiar expressions and very simple statements, provided people speak slowly. They can introduce themselves, ask and answer basic personal questions — a name, a place, the people they know. They communicate in a simple way if the other person is willing to repeat or rephrase.

First contact organises the work around those acts. The seventeen themes are the scenes where they appear. Super Memory, in the player, brings back the phrases that are still shaky, first as a game, then as a quiz, until they hold on their own.

A language heard first

French is written in the Latin alphabet. The first lessons put writing and speech together. Several final consonants are silent; nasal vowels have to be heard, not guessed from English. Bonjour already shows both: the written n is not a separate consonant, and the final r is the one you do hear.

The most frequent verbs in the course — être, avoir, aller — arrive in these sentences, in the present, already conjugated. Je vais à la gare lets you hear aller attached to a destination. Où pouvons-nous manger ? shows a question about place. Je suis perdu puts être into an immediate statement. Informal tu and formal vous appear according to the scene. The grammar of the course is the grammar these utterances already carry.

The six levels of the course

The levels use the titles from the player. Each one groups two or three themes from the French list (list 221). The order runs from arrival to the unexpected. You can follow that order, or open first the theme you need.

Level 1 — First words

Say what you need on arrival. The themes Essentials, Conversation and Learning open the course. You greet people, answer yes or no, ask them to repeat, take your leave. Bonjour is the first contact; Au revoir is the leave-taking you use when you step away.

Level 2 — Finding your bearings

Understand everyday landmarks. Colours, Numbers and Time tracking serve a room number, a price, a departure time. Un is the first figure in Numbers; it comes back whenever you need to count, pay or point to a platform, and the nasal vowel has to be heard on the recording.

Level 3 — Getting around

Move from place to place. Taxi, Transportation and Beach give you the sentences to say where you are going. Je vais à la gare ties the verb aller to the station, with the article already in place.

Level 4 — At the table and at the hotel

Order and stay. Restaurant, Bar and Hotel cover the table, the room and the bill. Où pouvons-nous manger ? is a first-evening question, complete enough to use as it stands, and clear enough for you to recognise où and the verb pouvoir.

Level 5 — Opening up to others

Make contact. Family, Feelings and Parting let you name people close to you, say how you are, take your leave. Mon père belongs to Family; the possessive and the noun are learned on the same line.

Level 6 — Always finding a way

Handle the unexpected. In case of trouble and Looking for someone close the course. You ask for help, you describe a simple problem, you say you have lost someone or lost your way. Je suis perdu is one of the most immediately useful sentences at this level.

Two paces, one course

The time given for First contact is thirty-six to fifty-nine hours. That figure covers the whole path: the seventeen chapters, the quizzes, and the passes through Super Memory. A sentence is heard, repeated, then comes back later, sometimes several times, until it holds on its own. Four hundred and twenty utterances, worked that way, occupy dozens of hours.

The gap between 36 and 59 hours comes from each person’s pace. At five to fifteen minutes a day, those hours spread over several weeks to several months, depending on the pace you want to give your learning and on how your memory works. That is the thread that builds A1 automatic responses: enough to greet people, get around, order and ask for help, while you still need the other person to speak clearly.

The player does not force you to follow everything in order. You can open the restaurant, the hotel or transportation first, according to the trip. Someone in a hurry can, in a few days, hold the expressions that really matter for their departure. That pick-and-choose path does not replace the 36 to 59 hours: it serves the urgency. After the trip, the same sentences are still there to revise.

How the course is worked

A session of five to fifteen minutes is enough to review a chapter or start another. You listen to the recording, you repeat the sentence, you read it again. Super Memory then tests the items that are still unstable. Listen mode lets you go back over the same sentences without opening a full lesson.

A teacher (italki, Preply, Superprof) or a conversation tool (ChatGPT, Gemini, Speak) can get you to reuse these sentences. Duolingo, Babbel and Memrise remain complements. The thread of the course is the seventeen themes.

Access to the course

First contact is followed online, free of charge: the lessons, the audio in the player, the quizzes and Super Memory. At Loecsen, that free access is neither blocking nor a source of stress. You can get a phrase wrong: you are not pushed to subscribe in order to keep progressing.

The only constraints are a limit on how many courses you can follow at the same time, and a generous but limited time to follow the courses even with an ad blocker.

An optional subscription adds a few extras: download the content as MP3 and PDF, obtain a course-completion certificate, remove the advertising, or choose your vocabulary. Online learning does not depend on those options.

When the A1 basics hold, the Independent in 6 months course continues the work towards A2–B1. The French courses page presents the language and the full set of programmes.

Loecsen has published online courses for more than twenty years. Millions of learners have followed this method. First contact is the way in, for French, at A1.