The French Sentence Solver 🕵️‍♀️

Transcript:

Welcome to the French Sentence Solver, your three-pillar audio guide designed to crack the code of correct French sentence structure. This guide will help you confidently string together magnifiques French sentences without relying on an app, book, or awkward charades! 🙌

If you dream of speaking French, but find yourself tongue-tied when you try to turn theory into practice, don't worry, you're in the right place.

This guide is perfect for French learners who:

• Already know a bunch of French words, but still get stuck every time they try to string a French sentence together. 

• Are absolute beginners and have no clue where to start when it comes to actually speaking French. 

• Feel like they’re about to commit a faux pas at the idea of spontaneously replying to someone else in French (especially without a pre-written sentence!)

• Have signed up for all the language apps and spent hours of their life watching YouTube videos, but still feel lost when it comes to crafting a sentence by themselves.

If this sounds like you, you’re in the right place. 

The French Sentence Solver is a simple three-pillar guide to successfully creating sentences in French (even if you’ve got to pull together a reply on the fly 😝)

By the end of this guide, you’ll:

1. Discover why stringing a sentence together in French might have been so difficult (up until now! 😉)

2. Solve the three most common French grammar misconceptions, keeping you stuck with your French. 

3. Unlock my four-step roadmap that will help you master French sentence structure in (almost!) no time.

But before we dive in, I want to quickly introduce myself for those who don't know me yet.

I'm Mathilde, I’m a native French speaker and French teacher. 🙋‍♀️

Since I started hosting the French Made Easy podcast a few years ago, (which has over three million downloads, and counting! 🎉) I've had one request repeatedly flooding my inbox:

“Can you pleeeeease create a grammar course?”

So obviously I did. I reached out to my audience – you! — to find out exactly what was keeping you stuck. 

Here were some of the results:

• You're struggling to string a complete French sentence together.

• Grammar seems like this boring code that you're yet to crack.

• Figuring out the correct order of French words feels nearly impossible.

• French gender and articles consistently trip you up.

Nodding along? I've got good news…

You're not the problem!

Pillar 1: The real reason speaking French can feel so tricky.

So, if you’re not the problem… what is? 

Easy: Your tools! 🛠️🔧

If you use the wrong tools to learn French, it can feel impossible to reach your goal of speaking French effortlessly. 

Now, I think the right apps and phrasebooks have their place in the language learning journey – particularly when it comes to vocabulary building. 

But in terms of successfully wrapping your mind around French grammar (so that you actually understand it!) and figuring out the correct sentence structures, these tools often aren’t helpful. 

That’s because many apps and phrasebooks teach you the same standard sentences and encourage you to repeat them over and over until you can regurgitate them during a conversation. 

But what’s the point of knowing how to ask where the bathroom is… when you can’t understand their reply (and, you know, actually find the bathroom using their directions)? 

I want to make sure that your French has real application and value. 

Many years ago, one of my friends was learning French on an app. As she walked into the kitchen, I heard her repeating, “Je suis un chat, je suis un chat, je suis un chat.” (I’m a cat.) 🐱

She was definitely nailing the pronunciation, but I was wondering how many times she’d be able to put that sentence to good use.

And, yep, there are only so many times (or even a single time?) in life when you can use the phrase, “I am a cat” in a real conversation.

To speak French effortlessly, you need to be able to create sentences by yourself – not just repeat pre-made phrases. 

Which means you need more than lines in an app or book. You need someone to show you the exact steps to create sentences on your own in French. 

And that's exactly what I'm going to teach you today! 

Let’s begin by fixing a few unhelpful habits that might be holding you back.

Pillar 2: Three common French grammar misconceptions keeping you stuck.

When I speak to French language beginners, I often hear them say something along the lines of: “I need to beef up my vocabulary and learn more French words. That’s how I’ll start speaking French!”

Which is a nice goal – one that’s backed by popular apps and books – but isn’t terribly useful for helping beginners speak French. 

Because it doesn’t matter how many French words you know if you can’t pull them together in a clear, coherent sentence (that French speakers can actually understand!)

To speak French, you need three elements: vocabulary, pronunciation, and grammar. I call this the trifecta of French fluency. 🎯

And, yes, learning French words – vocabulary – is one element. But it isn’t the only element. 

For example, if you want to say, “the garden is big”.  

In French, you say, “le jardin est grand”. 

Which means, you need to know the words for "the" (le), the word for ”garden” (jardin), the word for “big” (grand) and the word for “is” (est)

So, you need vocabulary. 

But that's not all you need. 

In order to be understood by French speakers, and to understand what French speakers are saying to you, you also need to be able to pronounce these words clearly and properly. And that's where learning pronunciation comes in. 

Listen to this: “Le jardin est grand.” 🎧

The difference between these 2 audio phrases may seem subtle, but in the first audio phrase, the pronunciation is incorrect, in the second audio phrase, the pronunciation is correct.

As a French speaker, if you were to say the first audio phrase, I’d find it really hard to understand what you were saying – and it’ll probably be hard for you as well to understand what I was saying. 

Without good enough pronunciation, it’s going to be difficult for us to converse. And, yes, I do mean good enough. We’re not after perfection and the mythical “speaking French like a native” thing.

I want you to speak French confidently and clearly so you can understand and be understood by French speakers.

That’s not at all how I teach pronunciation. 

But bringing us back to our French fluency trifecta, there’s still one element missing. Because even if you know the right words and how to pronounce them, you still need to be able to put them together in a coherent way. 

If you mix up the order of words and say “jardin est grand le" instead of “le jardin est grand”, I’ll again struggle to make sense of what you’re saying. 

So you need to study grammar to learn the correct sentence structure. And again, we're not after perfection, but after good enough. Something that French speakers will understand you and vice versa.

So, you can see learning French is not JUST about building up your French vocab! To speak French confidently, you need the French Fluency Trifecta: vocabulary, pronunciation, and grammar.

Grammar in general can be tricky. 

Learning the grammar rules of a new language... I’m not going to lie – as with everything in life, there’s definitely a learning curve. 

Especially when you’re a beginner! 

But that doesn’t mean it’s impossible. 

To wrap your mind around French grammar, you need learning material adapted to your level. 

I can't stress this enough! 

If you dive into a difficulty above your current level, you’ll struggle (and it’ll feel impossible to speak French!) 

It’s like working out. If you try to run a 10k when you’ve been a couch potato for the last ten years, it’s going to feel like you’re dying. Instead, you’ll want to start by walking regularly, then increasing your pace slowly before building up to jogging short distances, then longer distances, before finally running in a way that feels natural and progressive instead of torturous and painful. 

If you jump straight into 10k run, you might hurt yourself or even give up. 

The same goes for French (sans the hurt – hopefully). 

Now, I get that you probably want to learn everything as quickly as possible. But French is very vast, and it can become very overwhelming if you don't have a beginner mindset. 

So, if you're a beginner, start with beginner's materials. And double check that they’re actually for beginners! 

I cannot tell you how many times I heard that some books, or courses, were supposedly designed for beginners but turned out to be for the intermediate level. 

I get why and how this happens. As a teacher, sometimes it's hard not to put everything we know (and we want you, our student, to know everything we know) inside a lesson. 

But the result of these high-level info-packed lessons? Frustrated students who give up and rely on reciting from apps instead of learning to actually speak French.

So, for example, when you learn conjugation (because you will need to learn conjugation if you want to speak French), there’s no need to focus on all the tenses.  

Start by focusing on one. 

And if you’re wondering which one, I’ll be covering that soon. 

But, for now, allow yourself to be a beginner—no matter how long you’ve been at it. There’s no shame in learning the basics and finding learning materials adapted to your level. 

And the unspoken continuation of that sentence, “… so I won’t even try.”

Now, if you’re thinking – or have thought – something along those lines, you’re kindddd of correct. 

French does have heaps of rules and exceptions. And remembering ALL of them would feel impossible. 

But that’s why you shouldn’t try to remember all of them! Yep, this is me officially telling you to not even attempt to remember all the French grammar rules and exceptions. 

Instead, focus on remembering and mastering the most common rules and exceptions. 

Once you understand the rules, which is the first step, the next step is to practice, practice, practice that rule. 

Without practice and consistent practice, you can’t expect to remember things – any things!

My view is that we learn a language by doing, by practicing, by speaking, and by making mistakes – not simply by watching a few well-made videos and listening to a few podcasts praying it stays in our minds. 

Again, it’s like running a 10k. You won’t build up stamina and muscle by attempting the run once. You need to build up strength slowly and steadily by consistently putting on your sneakers and heading out for a run.  

It’s the same with French: You need consistent practice. 

So, whatever method you choose to use to learn French, make sure you do some practice exercises after learning a rule. 

Even if it's just five, ten or fifteen minutes per week, it doesn't matter as long as you do it consistently.

With consistent practice comes consistent growth! 

Pillar 3: My four-step roadmap that will help you master French sentence structure in no time.

Okay, now that you’re (hopefully) a little less intimidated by French grammar, it’s time to talk about taming those tricky sentence structures.

Because if remembering even the most important French grammar rules and exceptions still feels impossible, there’s a workaround. 

Meet my French Grammar Made Easy Roadmap (that simplifies everything!)

Since we’ve already covered the importance of consistent practice earlier, we’re going to focus on steps one, two and three. Let’s dive in!

If you’re struggling to understand French rules, a good place to start is to focus on recognising and understanding the different components of a sentence. 

Think of it like reverse-engineering your French language skills. By dissecting and identifying each element, you’ll be able to figure out how to create your own sentences in French. 

Now, there are lots of rules in French grammar, and those rules can only be understood, implemented, and remembered if you know the grammar "jargon." And, yes, there are a lot of grammar-jargon-words to decode before even attempting to learn the rules.

Which is usually why students find French grammar difficult and maybe a bit boring!

But it doesn’t have to be. If those jargon words are explained clearly and simply, you can learn to dissect sentences and identify the grammar in action. 

So, what are the different types of sentence components (aka jargon)?

Essentially, each component is a word. 

There are different types of words, which are the building blocks that you need to create sentences.

They are: 

• Nouns

• Determiners

• Adjectives

• Verbs

• Conjunctions

• Adverbs

• Prepositions

• Pronouns

Your goal is to be able to look at a sentence and know what a certain word is called. This isn’t just for fun and so you can feel fancy at a dinner party. It’s so that when you’re learning the many French rules involving a particular type of word, you’ll truly understand it. 

You need to know what a certain type of word is used for (what its function, or "job", is in a sentence.)

And, very important, you need to know how it interacts with other words in a French sentence. 

For example, let's take the sentence:

✏️ “Mes lunettes sont rouges.” (My glasses are red.)

Imagine that we’ve learned the different types of words, so we know that "mes" (my) is a determiner (more precisely, a possessive adjective), “lunettes” (glasses) is a noun (more precisely, a feminine plural noun), "sont" (are) is a verb (more precisely, conjugated in the present tense) and “rouges” (red) is an adjective. 

Now, if this is making you panic, don’t worry. You’re not expected to know all of this yet. But once you do, and you will (at some point) it’ll help you apply the rules that you know – or the ones that you’ll learn later on. 

For example, imagine you know these rules:

• Adjectives match the gender and number of the noun they describe.

The noun in that sentence, “lunettes”, is feminine and plural. Which is why I know that I have to add the letter “s” to the adjective "rouge".

Another rule.

• Determiners match the gender and number of the noun.

That's why I use "mes" and not “mon” or “ma” (which both also mean "my.")

And because I knew all of these rules, I successfully spoke French! 

But a lot of working knowledge went into that sentence, right?

This was just a very small example to show you how important it is to learn all these types of words in French. Learning these rules gives you a necessary grammar base to work on. 

And it shouldn’t be skipped! 

Now, if you’re looking for everything you need in the one place, I teach you how to become more confident with your French grammar in my French Grammar Made Easy course. (Psst — make sure to peek at the bottom of this page where a special, time-limited offer awaits you this week. 👀)

But if you're happy to do Google research, or you've got some learning materials already that you enjoy, I trust you'll find lessons on all of these.

And if you need somewhere to start, pay very special attention to rules about pronouns, adjectives, and adverbs. These types of words often cause trip-ups and confusion because they have different word orders in French than in English. 

Speaking of which…

Once you've learned all the building blocks – aka types of words —, you’ll need to put them together in order to create coherent sentences.

But, again, don’t panic: French sentence structure isn’t as difficult as you think it is. 

Most of the time, it’s the same as English. You just have to know where and when the word order differs from English. 

And as I said earlier, the culprits are often: adjectives, pronouns, and adverbs. 

Let me walk you through an example.

✏️ Mes lunettes sont sur la table. (My glasses are on the table)

Easy! It’s the same word order as in English. 

But if we wanted to say:

✏️ Mes lunettes rouges sont sur la table. (My red glasses are on the table)

This time, it’s a different word order because there’s an adjective.

This is when you’ll have to be careful because there are rules about the placement of the adjective. 

Adjectives are sometimes placed before the noun and sometimes after the noun, depending on a few things.

And, just warning you, with pronouns, there is a learning curve – but nothing that you cannot do.

Then, there is also special word order for particular types of sentences. For example, some types of interrogative sentences and negative sentences, etc. 

So, what you need to learn is the word order for:

• Declarative sentences, both affirmative and negative. 

✏️ Mes lunettes sont sur la table. (My glasses are on the table.) / Mes lunettes ne sont pas la table. (My glasses are not on the table.)

• Interrogative sentences

And the three main ways to ask questions (intonation method, ‘est-ce que’ method and inversion method.)

✏️ Mes lunettes sont sur la table? (Are my glasses on the table?) / Est-ce que mes lunettes sont sur la table? (Are my glasses on the table?) / Mes lunettes sont-elles sur la table? (Are my glasses on the table?)

Even if the inversion method is not used as much in spoken French, it's still good to learn it if you come across it in writing. Please don’t get hang up on the inversion method. Don’t block on this!

Phew – it’s a lot! And, again, I teach all of that in my course (in a way that’s super easy to wrap your mind around), but you'll definitely find lessons on these if you have some learning material already.

Now, when my students are learning word order, I like to also teach them the present tense at the same time. After all, you need to have at least one tense to learn how to make a sentence, right? 

This is where our next step comes into play. 

Conjugation is a big, scary word that can intimidate a lot of beginners. 

But, really, it’s simple once you understand how it works. 

In French, when you conjugate a verb, you change its ending depending on the subject, tense, or mood of the verb.

Now, there are a lot of tenses and moods in French. Trust me, you don’t need to know them all yet. 

But the ones you do need to know at this stage of your learning journey are:

• The present tense.

This is a must. Some other tenses are directly formed from the present tense, so there’s no way around it; you need to master this one first.

✏️ Je mange une pomme. (I'm eating an apple.) 

• The future tense.

You need to learn both the immediate future and the simple future, as both are used in spoken and written French.

✏️ Je vais manger une pomme. (Roughly translated as I'm going to eat an apple.) / Je mangerai une pomme. (I'll eat an apple.)

• The past tense.

Now, the past tense is considered quite difficult. At the beginner stage, you need to learn the passé composé and the imperfect. They are both past tenses, and both are used a lot. And there's often confusion about which one to use. So, make sure that you understand and practice the difference between these two tenses. 

✏️ J'ai mangé une pomme. (I ate an apple.) / Je mangeais une pomme. (Roughly translated as I was eating an apple.)

• The imperative, both affirmative and negative.

✏️ Mange une pomme! (Eat an apple!) / Ne manges pas de pomme! (Don't eat an apple.)

• The conditional

But just focus on the present conditional for now.

✏️ Je mangerais une pomme. (I'd eat an apple.)

• The subjunctive

Just focus on the present subjunctive for now. This one has a big learning curve. Keep the subjunctive on the side until you're mastering the other tenses & moods I gave you. It's still important to learn even at the beginner level though.

✏️ J'aimerais que tu manges une pomme. (I'd like that you eat an apple.)

Once you have these tenses and moods memorised, you’ll be able to apply them to your French sentences. 

Now, it might seem like a lot, but if you follow this roadmap, you’ll be able to say the right thing in the right way so that French speakers can understand what you’re saying. 

Which is to say… you’ll be able to speak French clearly and confidently!

Are you determined to make your French dream a reality?

Let’s keep your momentum going!

Moving forward, you've got two options:

Now, obviously, I'm biased toward option number two (and I’d love to have you as one of my students!) ;) But seriously, if you follow the steps I gave you and commit to learning and studying consistently, both options will work great.

But if you like my learning style and want to continue our adventure together…

Meet my French Grammar Made Easy course:

My signature course combines macaron-sized lessons guided by a native French speaker and teacher (me!) with zero fluff, practical lessons & practice exercises that make it super easy to understand, memorise, and master grammar rules, so you can ultimately create sentences on your own in French.

If you want to learn more about the course, click the link below, and we can continue our French grammar journey together. 

🍒 And here's the cherry on the cake - this week, I'm offering a special promotion! You can get the French Grammar Made Easy course for $100 off, plus four exclusive bonuses that will accelerate your French learning.

Thanks so much for listening. À bientôt. 💙

Sweet words from FGME students 🥰