Are you looking for the best apps to learn French? We’ve got you covered. Apps offer an excellent way to learn French, especially for beginners and kids, because:
- Kids love their smartphones, so why not encourage them to allocate some of that time to learning French?
- Apps make learning doable. Start with just 10 minutes a day!
- They offer a great way for parents and kids to learn together.
- They offer opportunities to practice anywhere and anytime can do anywhere.
- Apps don’t feel like school work – they’re just plain fun!
Read on to discover the best 7 apps that we tried and reviewed!
7 Best apps for Learning French
1. Duolingo
The pitch: Learn a New Language for Free for life! This is one of the top-rated language-learning apps out there. Learning with Duolingo is fun and addictive. Earn points for correct answers, race against the clock, and level up.
This app will listen to your pronunciation and let you know how you are doing. It builds on the learning you do each day. A typical French immersion student should breeze through the first level and be able to graduate quickly to levels more meaningful to them.
From our reviewer Martine: “A few years ago, I used it to brush up on my Italian and loved it! I road-tested the French version and am fully enthused.
I particularly liked that I could perform a test to determine my level to start, which brought me to the reinforcement levels. I feel that most French immersion students in grades 3 and up should select advanced and perform the test.
You then have the option of selecting where you would like reinforcement (like the dreaded prepositions!). I love that it mixes up reading comprehension, pronunciation and writing with cute graphics and great user interaction. It is very easy to use and it’s engaging… plus it sends you a reminder every day to do your lesson, which is definitely a plus!
I feel this app is definitely worth the 10 minutes a day. Overall I feel this would be a great choice for French immersion students trying to maintain or enrich their French…. definitely one of my favourites!”
Cost: Free.
Ratings: 4.8 stars on Apple.
2. Learn French with Babbel
The pitch: Babble teaches languages with a focus on everyday conversation, so it’s relevant, practical, and helps to get you speaking with confidence.
With 50 million users, this app is one of the most widely used.
From our reviewer, Martine: “This app allows you to perform a test prior to creating an account and choose the beginner or advanced level.
French immersion students should select the advanced level, as I felt the progression was very slow and they could easily tackle it.
I like that the Babble app requires the user to speak back to the phone to verify pronunciation. However, I didn’t like that it forced me to pronounce “non” with a Parisian French accent rather than how I usually say it as a Quebecer.
Every listening and speaking activity uses Parisian French pronunciation. Babble mixes up listening, reading, and writing in a pretty effective way, but be aware that you must download the lessons one-by-one. So, for those users who are tight on cellphone storage, that may be an issue.
One downside is that for some of the matching and fill-in-the blank activities, users can simply use the process of elimination to get through, which I feel is less effective to learn a language.
That being said, overall I feel the Babble app would be a good choice for French immersion students trying to maintain or enrich their French.”
Cost: Free.
Ratings: 4.7 stars on Apple.
3. Gus on the Go
The pitch: Explore a new language with the original Gus on the Go language app!
With 10 interactive lessons, engaging vocabulary reviews and delightful games, learning a new language has never been this fun!
Available now in 30 different languages in the App Store, Google Play and Amazon.
This app is appropriate for beginner learners or French immersion students age 4 to 6. This program is focused on learning with stories.
From our reviewer, Martine: “This app has nice graphics young children age 4 to 6 will enjoy.
The app does not require you to create an account, which is nice, but it also does not provide instructions as you navigate the activities, and so you must figure out what to do by guessing and clicking around.
The level of French presented is appropriate and it also does not require the child to speak to confirm the pronunciation.
A user can pass the first few levels simply by moving from screen to screen.
In my opinion, this makes the app a good one to start with to engage young learners as they will have fun with it.”
Cost: $3.99 on Apple.
Ratings: 4.2 stars on Apple.
For the older students:
4. Mango
The pitch: The Mango languages app create lovable language-learning experiences for language fanatics worldwide.
We believe in enriching lives with languages and culture, and we like to have fun.
Happy learners around the globe have used Mango to learn new languages, connect with new cultures, and broaden their horizons.
From our reviewer, Martine: “This app is definitely for older children or their parents.
Only one of the themes is geared to children. The other two, which are romance and wine/cheese, are more appropriate for adults.
Teenagers will like the microphone function that displays your recorded voice graph with the target voice graph and then will repeat your voice overlaid on the target pronunciation.
It also has a function to see the literal translation versus the understood translation which is a good example for an anglophone to understand the problems with a literal translation.
This app was definitely created from the perspective of an anglophone, which can be helpful for English speakers learning French.
I like that you can give it a try before creating an account. However, the downside with this app is that you must download lesson-by-lesson, so if storage is an issue, that may become a problem.
I was not asked to test my level so I began with: “Good morning, how are you?” which I found a bit annoying but not a deal-breaker.
Another interesting aspect is that their website has a lot of resources to purchase.
The nice thing about this app is that it is used and available for free at most Canadian libraries.”
Cost: Free.
Ratings: 4.8 stars on Apple.
5. FluentU
The pitch: This app is different from most others because it is video-based.
It claims to allow you to learn words in a real context with an engaging and entertaining video that will keep your attention.
From our reviewer, Martine: “I believe this app is more appropriate for older students from grade 6 and up. There are clips of videos with the words below that allow a user to tap on a word to get a very detailed description, which is great. It will be engaging for students who will enjoy finding their favourite song or video and listening to it. This feature may keep them coming back.
One note: If you opt to go with the subscription, you need to know that the onus is on you to cancel it if you do not like it otherwise, it will charge you automatically. I believe the cost makes it more prohibitive than some of the other options.”
Cost: Free with in-app purchases on Apple. 2 week free trial available.
Ratings: 4.4 stars on Apple.
6. In 24 Hours Learn French
The pitch: In 24 Hours Learn French is an audiovisual app designed to help its users learn the French language through 24 easy-to-follow modules.
From our reviewer, Brittney: “This is a great app for people who are looking to begin dabbling in French with little to no prior knowledge of the language.
This is an offline app, meaning you can practice your French anywhere, regardless of cellphone reception (no need to use data)!
You’ll only need an internet connection when unlocking new modules.
I’ll start off by saying it’s an extremely simple interface that even the most basic smartphone users can follow. There are no bells and whistles, which is nice.
The app gives you the first 12 of the 24 lessons for free.
You start off with three and unlock modules as you complete them, similar to game levels.
If you want to advance into lessons 13 and on, you’ll need to shell out $6.99, which isn’t too bad.
However, if you’re looking for an app to check your pronunciation or practice writing sentences for grammar, this is not the app for you.
The modules are strictly list style, in both French and English, with a voice reading off both translations. The voice reads down the list, which can be boring for someone who likes a more engaging learning style.
You are able to select and repeat an item as many times as you’d like, just to make sure you grasp it. While this app is no Duolingo or Babbel, it is a good place to start for developing the basics of French.”
Cost: First 12 Lessons Free, $6.99 for the full version.
Ratings: 4.5 stars on Apple.
7. Vidalingua
The pitch: This app will transform your iPhone or iPad into an advanced language interpreter that’s always ready and willing to help.
Vidalingua boasts extensive databases and advanced features which make it the most comprehensive French-English translator on iOS, though it is also available for other languages.
Our Review: While this app can certainly assist you in learning the language of romance (yes, that’s French!), it’s definitely not an app that can do the job all on its own.
Vidalingua isn’t the end-all be-all of language learning, but it’s a great tool to have in your arsenal to help you become conversational and comfortable speaking French.
The app immerses you in real-life situations that you’re likely to encounter on a trip and serves as a great help to help teens and tweens study for their classroom oral exams.
Since this is more of a dictionary companion (though it does offer sentence examples, verb conjugation, and a simple quiz) than an app that will actually give you language lessons, we recommend Vidalingua for more advanced French speakers who already have a decent grasp on the language but just need help filling in the blanks sometimes.
Cost: Free.
Ratings: 4.7 stars on Apple.
Here are a few other "techie" tips:
Settings on kids’ phone: Ask your child to switch the language settings of their Smartphone to French. This is especially impactful if your child has a Siri-enabled iPhone so he or she can hear “her” speak in French!
Don’t forget that all social media platforms can be set to French also, so let them “aimer” et “partager” en français!
Instagram feed: You can also follow Talk in French on Instagram and get a French word of the day directly to your newsfeed. Ask them to share it with you and try to insert it in a sentence together.
Did you try any of these apps? Let us know how you did and which one is your child’s “fav”!
