Have you heard of The French Tutorial? It offers a full French course absolutely free online.
The website, which has been around since 1999, says:
The French Tutorial is a web-based step by step lesson covering basics, pronunciation, but also grammar, vocabulary and everyday French. It offers audio and video support for better oral comprehension, a table of contents and an index for faster searches.
It is offered as charityware and accepts donations from those who find it helpful.
The site is easy to navigate, with the course going through a series of pages where you click next to go to the next lesson.
While it’s designed for adults, kids old enough to read should be able to navigate it easily. They can move at their own paces and go back to revisit things they need to refresh. It is simple to use but not designed to be especially fun, so younger kids may have a better time with other programs.
It is a simple, easy to use program that could be a great resource for middle school and high school aged kids who’d like to learn French, though, or younger kids with a high interest in learning French.
The site starts with the French alphabet, where you can click on each letter to hear its name said in French. From there, there is information like basic tips such as this:
Remember this before going further: Most of the time, do not pronounce
final d, s, t or x in French words.As an example, red letters are not pronounced in the following words:
un rebond (a bounce)
français (French)
un saut (a jump)
heureux (happy)
Chapter two is pronunciation, where you can click to hear each common vowel sound in various words said by a French male speaker.
Chapter three is basic grammar. From there, there are very short tests to make sure you understand things before moving on. The answers are on the bottom of the page.
Further chapters cover conjugating verbs, vocabulary by themes like holidays, counting, adjectives, questions, and much more.
There are many other free programs to learn French, such as Duolingo and youtube videos. This one is a great option, though. I appreciate that it teaches you first, as opposed to apps like Duolingo that just quiz you and you need to figure it out as you go. Duolingo would be an excellent supplement to The French Tutorial.
If you know of other good, free language programs, please add them in the comments!
