Most language learning apps will prepare you for a vacation to France. (We have the “Essentials” course in French and 80+ other languages, if that’s what you need.)

But what if you have more serious personal and professional needs?

Do more than just survive your next vacation. Prepare to live and work in the Francophone world with the Beginner French for Professionals course!

What will you learn?

This course will help you progress from true beginner to CEFR A2 or ACTFL Novice-High with 75+ hours of learning materials, including:

• 18 conversation lessons
• 71 vocabulary lessons (covering 1,063 words and phrases)
• 63 grammar lessons

As a beginner, nothing will build your proficiency faster than learning the most useful, high-frequency vocabulary. But providing basic vocab lists (like “colors” or “directions”) actually hurts your ability to retain what you’re learning due to “semantic interference”. It’s also just not very fun. 🤷‍♀️

Instead, when we develop lessons, we think of a common scenario and tell a story about it. What scenarios are you likely to be in? Who are the characters you’ll interact with? What conversations would you have?

This approach lends itself to more natural speech you might not find in a textbook approach, as well as other retention tactics like “spiraling” (resurfacing previously learned material) and “interleaving” (reinforcing material in multiple modalities and contexts). A lesson about shopping can weave in numbers, colors, sizes, etc. in a more effective and memorable way.

Conversation, Vocabulary, and Grammar

Each of the 9 units contain three lesson types that support this storytelling format:

• Conversation lessons are 60-minute exercises based on the unit theme. For example, in a unit about celebrations, several employees are chatting at the company holiday party.
• Vocab lessons are 30-minute exercised that build vocabulary needed to understand the theme and the conversations. For example, the companion vocabulary lesson to the holiday party conversation introduces words and phrases related to inviting your colleagues.
• Grammar lessons are 20-minute exercises that expand on grammar patterns seen elsewhere in the unit. For example, to help understand grammar seen in the holiday party conversation, a grammar lesson teaches you how to use demonstrative adjectives to point out people and objects.

What about culture?

This approach emphasizes the knowledge and skills you will need to use the language in the French-speaking world, including culture, as our Project Manager Kate Blais explains:

“The conversations use real-world language you’ll actually hear, including slang, interjections, etc. No rigid, cookie cutter conversations you’d find in a textbook. The voiceover artists did a really good job of acting them out with realistic speech, so it’s great practice for learners preparing to use this language in the real world.

There’s also a section for cultural notes that gives the learner important context for the conversation. For example, the conversation lesson about attending a company holiday party includes a slide discussing how common these parties are among French workers, that it’s acceptable to bring your family along, and other important cultural info.”

Beginner French for Professionals is available now in Transparent Language Online. Log in, try it free, or find it free at a library near you.

👀 Looking for more? Stay tuned—Intermediate French for Professionals (CEFR B1-B2) is on its way this summer!