You’ve heard the French word “alors” before but what does it mean and how do you use it?

Alors means so, then, well and in that case. Alors has many usages and can cause confusion for beginners. French speakers place alors in different parts of the sentence (Alors, qu’est-ce que tu fais? So, what are you doing?) and use it multiple expressions (Ça alors! You don’t say!). This post also teachers alors vs. donc, which means therefore.

The the French “est-ce que” can seem quite foreign and mysterious to a beginner student who’s just starting to learn French. Simply put, est-ce que is used in asking informal questions. It’s literal translation is, “is this that”. A loose translation for est-ce que is, is, are, do and does for questions. You put it directly in front of any statement to make a question. In this short lesson you’ll learn how to ask a question with est-ce que and find lots of useful examples. Keep reading!

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Learning how to read and pronounce the French accents marks correctly can be a big challenge for a beginner French student. The names of the French accents are: the l’accent aigu (é), l’accent grave (è), le circonflexe (ê), l’accent tréma (ë) and la cédille (ç).

Our goal is to completely demystify the French accents and explain the pronunciation so you can start to incorporate them into your reading and speaking. Getting French pronunciation down is tricky. Here you can master the reading rules and alphabet and -r sounds. I can also help you with your reading on my private online lessons.

acute accent- l’accent aigu

L’accent aigu is an upward slanting accent and appears only over the letter -e and looks like this: é. Of all the French accents this one is by far the most important as it’s used very widely throughout the language and has a big impact on how the -e is pronounced.

My name is David Issokson. Since the beginning of 2014 I’ve helped hundreds of students to learn French through my online lessons.

Over the years I’ve noticed a trend that we all seem to make the same mistakes.

Indeed, these mistakes are universal. One of the single most imporant things that we can do is French learners is try to nip these errors in the bud early on during our learning.

I’ve actually made a list of over 100 beginner mistakes. In this article I’m going to list out the most common mistakes and show you how you can correct them.

On this page you will find a list of the most common French slang (argot) words you can use in everyday conversation. I have handpicked these words based on a lifelong experience speaking French. Knowing French slang has lots of advantages including:

• Discovering the richness of the language and not just being stuck using boring textbook French;
• Dramatically improving listening comprehension being able to understand French TV shows and movies;
• Being able to impress native speakers when you can throw out a few slang words in conversations.

Have you ever wanted to learn French idioms and expressions with colors? Here you will find a complete and comprehensive list with English translations.

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