How long does it take to hold a conversation in French?

This is the question I am asked most, and the one I like least to answer quickly, because the quick answers are all a little dishonest. "Six months" sells courses. "It depends" is true and useless. What follows is the version I give people in the free conversation when we have twenty minutes: what the published figures say, what they leave out, and what I actually see week to week.

First, which conversation?

"Holding a conversation" covers three very different things, and most disappointment about progress comes from measuring yourself against the wrong one.

1. Getting through an exchange. The bakery, the pharmacy, the hotel desk, the taxi. Short, predictable, and the other person wants it to be over as much as you do. This is where most people spend their first months, and it is a genuine milestone, not a consolation prize.
2. Ten minutes about yourself. Who you are, what you do, why you are learning French, what you did at the weekend, with someone patient. One to one, on a topic you know. This is what most people mean when they say they want to "have a conversation".
3. A table of French people. Several voices, no patience, fast, funny, half in slang. Following it well enough to join in uninvited. This is the one people actually dream about, and it is a different order of difficulty from the other two.

The first takes weeks. The second takes months. The third takes a year or more of the second, plus some living. Anyone who tells you otherwise is describing a different person, or selling something.

What the published numbers say

Two sets of figures get quoted everywhere, and both are worth knowing as long as you know what they measure.

The American diplomats’ number

The United States Foreign Service Institute, which trains diplomats, groups languages by how long its students take to reach what it calls professional working proficiency. French sits in the easiest group for English speakers, alongside Spanish, Italian and Dutch, at roughly 24 to 30 weeks of full-time study, which the FSI puts at around 600 to 750 classroom hours (FSI, US Department of State). Professional working proficiency is high: roughly a strong B2 or a C1 on the European scale, the level at which you can argue a point in a meeting. Note the conditions, too. Full-time, five days a week, with homework, in a class of motivated adults whose job depends on it.

The language schools’ numbers

French schools tend to quote guided learning hours per level on the European scale, the CEFR. The figures vary by school but cluster around the same range: roughly 60 to 100 hours to reach A1, 180 to 200 cumulative for A2, 350 to 400 for B1, and 550 to 650 for B2. Notice that the B2 figure and the FSI figure agree, more or less, which is reassuring about both.

These are classroom hours, so they assume a teacher, a syllabus and a room full of other people taking turns. They are a fair guide to how much French you need to have met. They say very little about how much of it you can say, which is the thing you asked about.

Why hours are the wrong unit

Two people can both have done four hundred hours of French. One did them in a class of twelve, speaking for perhaps four minutes an hour. The other did half of them one to one, speaking for thirty-five minutes an hour, and the rest on their own, out loud. On paper they are the same. In a conversation they are not close.

Speaking is a separate skill from understanding, and it only grows when you speak. So the unit that predicts conversation is not hours of French. It is minutes of you talking, to a person, under mild pressure. In a group class that number is small and shared. In a one-to-one session it is most of the session. In a week of app streaks it is close to zero. If you want to know how long it will take, count that.

A realistic timeline for a busy adult

This is what I see, week to week, from someone who already understands a fair amount of French, has a job and a life, does one fifty-minute session a week in which they do most of the talking, and puts in ten or fifteen minutes a day on their own, out loud. Not the fastest possible learner. A normal one.

• Weeks 1 to 4. The freeze gets a shape. You learn to say the simple sentence instead of the perfect one, to fill silence in French rather than in English, and to carry on after a mistake. The bakery stops being an event.
• Weeks 5 to 8. The first kind of conversation is done. The counter, the appointment, the taxi. You answer the standard questions about yourself without going through English first. This is the end of an eight-session programme, and it is where most people first notice that other people have noticed.
• Months 3 to 4. The second kind is within reach. Ten minutes about your week or your work, one to one, with mistakes and without stopping. You correct yourself and keep going. Your partner’s parents, or your colleague, start speaking to you rather than about you.
• Months 5 to 6. The ten minutes becomes twenty, on topics you did not prepare. You have opinions in French. You are still lost at a fast table with six people, but you ask what you missed, in French, and the asking keeps you in.
• A year in. The third kind of conversation, on a good day, with a family or a team you know. On a bad day you are still quiet by the cheese course, but it is tiredness now, not fear.

If you are starting from nothing, add three to four months at the front for the engine to be built at all. If you have lived in France or with a French speaker, you may find the first stage takes weeks rather than a month, because the comprehension is already there and only the retrieval is missing.

What speeds it up

• A reason with a date. A move, a wedding, a job, a family Christmas. People with a deadline progress about twice as fast as people who "would like to be better", because the practice actually happens.
• Narrowness. One situation a week, spoken about a lot, beats a bit of everything. Vocabulary retrieved fifty times stays. Vocabulary met once in a list does not.
• A person who answers back. Not a phone, not a mirror. Someone who mishears you, changes the subject and waits. The pressure that makes you freeze is social, so the practice must be too.
• Ten minutes a day, out loud. Talking to yourself in the car counts. Reading aloud counts. Recording a voice note to your coach counts a lot, because someone replies.
• Fixing the same three mistakes. Not all of them. The three that cost you the most, tracked from week to week until they are gone. Then the next three.

What slows it down

• Waiting to feel ready. There is no level at which speaking stops being frightening if you have not been speaking. Readiness is a result.
• An English-shaped life in France. Work in English, friends in English, the counter avoided. Immersion is a myth for most people who move for an English-speaking job, unless they arrange the French on purpose.
• Long gaps. A fortnight off costs about a week. A month off costs most of a month. Consistency matters more than intensity; one session every week beats three in a good week and none for a month.
• Only studying. Grammar exercises, vocabulary lists, apps. They feel like progress and they are, of a kind. They are not speaking. If your evenings are all study and no talk, the conversation is not coming.

So, how long?

For the conversation most people mean, ten minutes about your life with someone patient: two to four months of weekly one-to-one sessions and daily minutes, if you already understand a fair amount; five to seven if you are starting from the beginning. For the table of French people: give it a year of that, and some living. For the counter and the taxi: weeks. And the one figure I would ask you to hold onto is not any of these. It is the number of minutes a week you spend speaking to someone. Move that, and every other number moves with it.

The programmes at French, Actually are eight, sixteen and twenty-four weekly sessions for roughly the three stages above; what each one covers is on the programmes page. If you would rather talk it through, the free conversation is twenty minutes with me, and I will tell you honestly where you are on this timeline.