Learning French Step by Step: Pronunciation, Grammar, then the DELF

French is written with the same 26 Latin letters Indonesian uses, plus five accent marks that sit above or below a letter. The accent aigu only ever appears on e (é). The accent grave shows up on è, à and ù. The accent circonflexe can sit on any of the five vowels (â, ê, î, ô, û). The tréma splits two neighbouring vowels so each is sounded on its own, as in Noël. The cédille makes c sound like s before a, o and u, as in garçon and français. For an Indonesian learner, these marks are the first clue to how a word should be read aloud.

Three e sounds are worth separating from day one. A plain e at the end of a syllable, as in le and je, is weak and short. The é of café and été is closed, with the corners of the lips drawn slightly back. The è of mère and père is more open, and the ê of fête sounds much like è. Some accents change meaning while leaving the sound alone: a means has while à means at or to, and ou means or while où means where.

The most useful drill is reading word lists aloud while pointing at each accent, for example le and les, été and fête, ou and où. In writing, the accents always go in, because a word missing its accent counts as a spelling mistake in any written task. On a phone keyboard, holding down the base letter brings up its accented forms, so the habit can start with the very first message a learner types in French.

French spelling keeps plenty of letters that are never said. Final s, t, d, x and z are usually silent, so Paris is read pa-ree, petit is read puh-tee, and beaucoup sounds like boh-koo. A final e is normally silent too. A handy rule of thumb many teachers use is the word careful: the consonants c, r, f and l at the end of a word tend to be pronounced, as in parc, finir, neuf and sel. The rule has exceptions, such as the silent r of parler, yet it is good enough for guessing how a new word sounds.

Silent letters sometimes come back to life through liaison. When the next word starts with a vowel or a mute h, a final consonant that was silent links onto that vowel: les amis becomes lay-za-mee and vous avez becomes voo-za-vay. An s or x in liaison is sounded as z. Liaison is required after articles and subject pronouns, and it never happens after et. Enchaînement does something similar with consonants that are always pronounced, so elle a runs together as e-la. Words starting with an aspirated h, such as les héros, are read with no link at all.

These two habits explain why beginners struggle to pick out individual words when listening. A good drill: take a short sentence from audio, write out the transcript, draw a small arc at every link, then read it back while copying the rhythm. A learner who reads one word at a time sounds choppy, while linked speech flows.

French verbs change with their subject, so the subject pronouns come first: je, tu, il, elle, on, nous, vous, ils, elles. Tu is for friends and relaxed settings, vous for formal situations or more than one person, and on often stands in for nous in everyday talk. Then come the two irregular verbs found in nearly every sentence: être (je suis, tu es, il est, nous sommes, vous êtes, ils sont) and avoir (j'ai, tu as, il a, nous avons, vous avez, ils ont).

Avoir hides a trap for Indonesian speakers. Age is expressed with avoir, j'ai vingt ans, literally I have twenty years. Hunger and thirst take avoir too: j'ai faim, j'ai soif. Learners who translate word for word tend to write je suis vingt ans, and the mistake fades fastest when the whole expression is memorised as one unit.

The -er group feels light after that, since about nine in ten French verbs follow it. Take the stem parl- from parler and add -e, -es, -e, -ons, -ez, -ent. Four of those forms, parle, parles, parle and parlent, sound exactly alike; only nous parlons and vous parlez sound different. Most of the difficulty with -er verbs therefore lives in the spelling. The -ir group led by finir, with its -iss- insert in nous finissons, and irregular verbs such as aller, faire and prendre come later.

A simple weekly routine: conjugate three new -er verbs in full for all six persons, then use each one in a sentence about yourself, such as j'habite à Bandung or nous travaillons le samedi.

Early conversation grows fastest from whole phrases that carry an empty slot. Je m'appelle takes a name, je voudrais takes whatever is being asked for, j'habite à takes a city, and je suis takes a job or a status. One frame produces dozens of sentences: je voudrais un café, je voudrais l'addition, je voudrais un billet pour Lyon. Learners memorise the frame once and swap the contents to suit the moment.

Register shapes which phrase fits. Bonjour is polite during the day and on walking into a shop, bonsoir covers the evening, and salut is kept for friends. With strangers, staff or an examiner, vous and s'il vous plaît are the safe choice; tu and s'il te plaît come in once the other person invites a more familiar tone. A register slip rarely blocks understanding, though it does sound odd to a native ear.

Role play brings these phrases to life: ordering at a café, buying a train ticket, asking the way to the station, introducing yourself in class. Each scenario is written as a six- to eight-line dialogue, practised with a partner, then repeated without the script. Five minutes of speaking without reading in every study session builds the habit of answering on the spot, the same habit the DELF speaking paper asks for.

Once the present tense, negatives and questions feel easy, the next step is telling stories about the past with the passé composé. It pairs a helper verb, avoir or être, with a past participle: j'ai mangé, nous avons parlé, je suis allé. Most verbs take avoir. A set of verbs of movement and change of state, including aller, venir, arriver, partir, naître and mourir, take être, and their participle agrees with the subject in gender and number, as in elle est allée. This is where the early drilling of être and avoir pays off a second time.

Level A2 adds talk about routines, shopping, transport and appointments. On the way to B1, learners usually add the imparfait for setting a scene, the futur for plans and the conditionnel for polite requests such as je voudrais, a form learners have actually been using since their first phrases. B2 calls for well-organised argument and an ability to follow article-length texts, and it is the level French-speaking universities commonly ask of international applicants. For some purposes, such as certain applications or visas, institutions ask for the TCF, a scored test from the same publisher.

Progress at this stage is measured in paragraphs. A learner writes 60 to 80 words about last weekend, then checks every helper verb and participle agreement. As a rough time reference, the Foreign Service Institute places French in Category I, with an estimate of about 750 class hours (30 weeks) to reach working proficiency for English speakers. That figure is an estimate, and each learner's pace depends on how steadily they practise.