Reaching A2 in French usually takes about 160–200 hours of study, B1 360–400, B2 560–650 and C1 810–950 (Alliance Française guidance). At one hour a day that is roughly 6 months to A2, a year to B1, 20 months to B2 and about two and a half years to C1. For English speakers French is one of the quicker languages: the US Foreign Service Institute puts it in its easiest group, at about 750 class hours to professional level. Below are the months for 15 minutes to 2 hours a day, what speeds you up or slows you down, and a weekly plan.
Hours and months for each level
The table uses the cumulative hours of instruction that Alliance Française gives for each level, counted from zero. To turn hours into months we took the middle of each range, divided it by your daily study time and by 30.4 days in a month, and rounded to the nearest half month.
| Level | Hours from zero | 15 min a day | 30 min a day | 1 hour a day | 2 hours a day |
|---|
| A2 | 160–200 | 23.5 months | 12 months | 6 months | 3 months |
|---|
| B1 | 360–400 | 50 months | 25 months | 12.5 months | 6.5 months |
|---|
| B2 | 560–650 | 79.5 months | 40 months | 20 months | 10 months |
|---|
| C1 | 810–950 | 116 months | 58 months | 29 months | 14.5 months |
|---|
Two caveats. These are hours of teacher-led classes, and homework is not counted on top, so steady self-study usually needs at least as many hours. And progress feels slower the higher you go: B2 to C1 takes almost as long as zero to B1. If you already know some French, take the French vocabulary test to see where you start.
What Alliance Française, DELF and the FSI say
There is no single official number, but the main French-language institutions give similar orders of magnitude.
| Level | Alliance Française, hours from zero | DELF/DALF brochure, Institut français |
|---|
| A1 | 60–100 | 60–80 |
|---|
| A2 | 160–200 | up to 200 |
|---|
| B1 | 360–400 | about 400 |
|---|
| B2 | 560–650 | about 600 |
|---|
| C1 | 810–950 | 750–850 |
|---|
| C2 | 1,060–1,200 | about 1,000 |
|---|
DELF and DALF are the official diplomas of the French Ministry of Education, run by France Éducation international; the hours above are given as indicative figures in an Institut français brochure about these exams. The US Foreign Service Institute counts differently: it estimates about 30 weeks, or roughly 750 class hours, for an English-speaking diplomat to reach professional working proficiency in French, which is close to C1, with intensive classes and self-study on top. All three agree on the main point: B1 takes several hundred hours, not a few weeks.
What changes the time for an English speaker
- Vocabulary you already half know. After the Norman Conquest, thousands of French words entered English: government, justice, restaurant, beef, garage. Formal words often look almost the same in both languages, so reading comes early.
- False friends. Actuellement means currently, une librairie is a bookshop and rester means to stay. There are not many, but they are common.
- Gender and agreement. Every noun is masculine or feminine (le livre, la table), and articles and adjectives agree with it. English has nothing like this, so it needs regular practice.
- Verb forms. French verbs change for each person, and in the past you choose between passé composé and imparfait, and between avoir and être.
- Pronunciation and spelling. Nasal vowels (vin, bon, blanc), the u in tu, silent final letters and liaison. Writing down what you hear is much harder than reading.
Ethnologue puts the lexical similarity of French and English at about 0.27 on a scale from 0 to 1, far below French and Italian (0.89). Still, the French and Latin layer of English makes written French much less opaque than that number suggests; listening is usually the slower skill.
How many words each level needs
Research on vocabulary size and CEFR levels gives roughly these ranges: up to 1,500 words for A1, 1,500–2,500 for A2, 2,750–3,250 for B1, 3,250–3,750 for B2 and 3,750–4,500 for C1. A word here is a word family: parler, parle and parlé count once.
Frequency matters more than the total. In a corpus study by Cobb and Horst, the 2,000 most frequent French word families covered about 84% of the words in general magazine texts, so the first months of vocabulary work pay off fastest. By level: A2, B1, B2 and C1; the French breakdown is in how many words you need in French.
At 10 new words a day you add about 3,650 words a year, as long as reviews stop them from fading.
A realistic weekly plan
An example for about 5 hours 45 minutes a week. At this pace you reach A2 in about 7 months and B1 in about 15 months from zero.
| Day | What to do | Time |
|---|
| Weekdays | New words and scheduled reviews, a short story or dialogue at your level, then a grammar topic or a few sentences of writing | 45 min |
|---|
| Saturday | A longer text, a podcast or an episode with French subtitles, plus a conversation | 1 h 30 min |
|---|
| Sunday | Reviews only and a short paragraph about your week | 30 min |
|---|
Short daily sessions beat one long one: in the meta-analysis by Cepeda and colleagues (2006), spaced practice gave clearly better long-term recall than massed practice. On a bad day, cut the session to 15 minutes of reviews instead of skipping it. More on this: how spaced repetition works and how long B1 and B2 take in other languages.
How NewLexi helps
- Word sets by topic, level or exam. Ask in the chat for words for DELF B1 or for renting a flat in Paris, and the set arrives already split into categories.
- Words in context with example sentences, audio and spaced repetition, so each word comes back just before you would forget it.
- A daily plan of reviews, new words and reading that fits the time you have.
- Stories and dialogues written for your level with the words you are learning.
- Grammar from A1 to C2: lessons and exercises from articles and gender to the subjunctive, plus sentence building.
- Writing practice with instant AI feedback, and an AI chat for conversation.
- Import words from a photo of a textbook page, from Anki or from Quizlet.
- Lock Screen widgets that keep your French words in sight during the day.
NewLexi is for iPhone only. It is free on the App Store, with an optional Pro subscription.
FAQ
How long does it take to learn French to B1?
About 360–400 hours from zero. That is roughly a year at an hour a day, about two years at 30 minutes a day and about 6 months at two hours a day.
Can I learn French in a year?
Yes, to A2 or B1: a year is usually enough for A2 at 30 minutes a day and for B1 at an hour a day. Getting to C1 in a year takes intensive study of about 2 to 3 hours every day.
How many hours a day should I study French?
30 to 60 minutes a day is a pace most adults can keep, and it gets you to B1 in one to two years. More helps only if you can sustain it: a daily half hour beats a weekend marathon.
Is French hard for English speakers?
Not especially: it is one of the easier languages for English speakers, and the FSI places it in Category I with Spanish and Italian. Shared vocabulary helps a lot; pronunciation, gender and verb forms are what take time.
How long does it take to reach B2 for the DELF?
About 560–650 hours from zero, so roughly 20 months at an hour a day or 10 months at two hours. B2 is the level most French universities ask of international students.
Sources
- Alliance Française du Yorkshire. FAQ: How long does it take to reach the next level? (cumulative hours of instruction per CEFR level). afleeds.org.uk/faq
- Institut français du Maroc / Campus France Maroc. Les certifications en français: DELF, DALF, TCF (brochure). maroc.campusfrance.org/system/files/medias/documents/2022-01/Brochure%20diplômes%20IF.pdf
- France Éducation international. DELF tout public. www.france-education-international.fr/diplome/delf-tout-public
- U.S. Department of State, Foreign Service Institute. Foreign Language Training: language difficulty for English speakers. www.state.gov/foreign-language-training
- Council of Europe. Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR). www.coe.int/en/web/common-european-framework-reference-languages
- Milton, J., & Alexiou, T. (2009). Vocabulary size and the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages. In B. Richards et al. (Eds.), Vocabulary Studies in First and Second Language Acquisition (pp. 194–211). Palgrave Macmillan. doi.org/10.1057/9780230242258_12
- Cobb, T., & Horst, M. (2004). Is there room for an academic word list in French? In P. Bogaards & B. Laufer (Eds.), Vocabulary in a Second Language (pp. 15–38). John Benjamins. www.lextutor.ca/cv/awl_F.htm
- Lexical similarity between languages (values published by Ethnologue). Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lexical_similarity
- Cepeda, N. J., Pashler, H., Vul, E., Wixted, J. T., & Rohrer, D. (2006). Distributed practice in verbal recall tasks. Psychological Bulletin, 132(3), 354–380. doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.132.3.354
Start learning French with NewLexi
Free on the App Store for iPhone.
Download on the App Store
