Learning a new language is a daunting task. A mountain of vocabulary, no clear measure of progress and a million different strategies you could follow.

Well, it doesn’t have to be like that. All you need is FOCUS and a little understanding of the secrets behind French language.

Not all words were created equal…

Knowing that a native French speaker has a vocabulary of around 20,000 words, you may think you need to aim for a similar level, but that is a bad strategy! Learning that number of words, one by one, would take a lifetime.

You need to focus on the important words.

It’s amazing what you can do with just 500 words

Take a look at the text below. The words in bold are all within the 500 most frequent French words and they make up almost 50% of this paragraph! The best part is that this is true for any text, so by learning just 2.5% of a native speakers vocabulary, you will already understand half of the words in any article, book or blog!

Le jeudi 1er septembre, la nouvelle lune passe devant le Soleil et il se produit une éclipse. Première remarque : la Lune est à près de 393 000 kilomètres de la Terre et c’est un peu trop loin pour que son disque occulte totalement celui du Soleil, cette éclipse est donc annulaire, c’est-à-dire qu’il reste un mince anneau solaire éblouissant autour de la Lune. Seconde remarque : cette éclipse n’est pas visible en Europe ; pour l’admirer l’anneau solaire, vous devez vous trouver dans la bande de centralité, qui traverse l’Afrique (Gabon, Congo, République démocratique du Congo, Tanzanie, Mozambique) et Madagascar, puis couvre en grande partie l’île de La Réunion.

The graph below shows that this trend continues beyond 500 words and you will actually make huge progress all the way up to 2000 words. That’s why it is vital to target the high frequency words first.

Specialised vocabulary

But the fun doesn’t stop there. The progress made after 2000 words looks awfully slow, but you can do better than his! Focus instead on the most frequent words which are used in the type of French you are interested in; and you can make progress much faster.

Let’s go back to our previous example about the eclipse. If I was to focus on words related to astronomy (e.g lune, Soleil, éclipse…) I could rapidly increase my understanding of the paragraph and other related astronomy texts. This also works for much broader categories; for example, if I were to focus on words related to Academia, I would be understand many of the words occuring in scientific papers.

This principle can be applied to anything. The words most often used in conversation, specialised words for business or words that are most prevelant in the news.

So low frequency words just aren’t important?

No. Of course they are important, but you should focus on learning strategies to learn these words, rather than the individual words themselves. Here are a couple:

Guess from context — Use contextual clues to understand the meaning of a word. If you do this enough times, you will start to learn the new word.

— Use contextual clues to understand the meaning of a word. If you do this enough times, you will start to learn the new word. Dictionary/Google — One of the best and simpliest ways to learn low frequency words is to just look them up whenever you come across them. It can be slow, but remember these words aren’t as important, so learning them at a slow pace is no bad thing!

— One of the best and simpliest ways to learn low frequency words is to just look them up whenever you come across them. It can be slow, but remember these words aren’t as important, so learning them at a slow pace is no bad thing! Build the word from it’s parts — Words are often made up of segments of smaller words, prefixes and suffixes that you will already know. You can use this knowledge to work out a word the first time you encounter it.

Why is vocabulary important?

Sometimes, just learning vocabulary feels like you are not really learning a language, but just a collection of words you could never put together. Well, that just isn’t true!

Research has shown that the size of your vocabulary is directly related to your ability to comprehend texts! It’s obvious right, if you know the 5000 most frequent French words, you will know 90% of the words in any text and that will be more than enough for you to grasp the meaning.

Learning strategy

So now you know which words you need to learn, how do you learn them? Well this ones up to you, it comes down to how much time you have, which methods you enjoy and ultimately whichever gives you the best results. Here are some options:

1. Flashcards

Flashcards have been about since the dawn of time and there is now a myriad of ways to use flashcards to improve your vocabulary:

Memrise — The undisputed king of flashcards Memrise has a number of courses to learn the most valuable French words. Here’s one : http://www.memrise.com/course/47/minimum-viable-french/

— The undisputed king of flashcards Memrise has a number of courses to learn the most valuable French words. Here’s one : http://www.memrise.com/course/47/minimum-viable-french/ Lingvist — Lingvist have really hung their hat on word frequency, so although they are relatively new, it is a great site to use if you want to focus on these words.

— Lingvist have really hung their hat on word frequency, so although they are relatively new, it is a great site to use if you want to focus on these words. By Hand- Alternatively, roll back the years and go back to the humble pen and paper. Although this will take much longer, the process of writing the cards will also help strengthen your memory.

2. Duolingo

If you want to focus on the most frequent words, duolingo may not be the best tool to do this because they group words by topic, not frequency. However, they still do include the most frequent words high up the tree and offer a slightly more interesting experience than flashcards.

3. Sublingual

Sublingual inserts words and short phrases into the webpages you visit, focusing on the most frequently used French words. It is an effortless way to strengthen your French vocabulary as you browse around online.

Try sublingual for free