French Exercises Online: 12+ Exercises to Improve Your French Language Skills

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French is one of the most popular languages to learn. So there are plenty of French exercises online. In fact, the Internet is practically bursting with courses, lessons and exercises for improving your French.

There are so many, that it can be difficult to know where to start.

How can you tell the wheat from the chaff?

I’ve searched the web far and wide to find over 10 of the best French exercises to help you improve your French language skills. I made sure to dig up a variety of exercises to help you improve in the four major skill areas of the language: reading, writing, speaking and listening.

A quick note before we get started: if you’d prefer to simply find online French resources that don’t involve exercises or quizzes, check out our articles on French reading and French listening resources.

And now, let’s jump in! Give some (or all!) of the following French exercises a try, and be sure to incorporate your favourites into your regular study routine.

1. Lingolia: French Grammar Exercises

Lingolia’s French site has a wealth of grammar explanations and exercises for nearly all aspects of the French language.

Click any section under the Grammar menu on the left side of the page, then select a subsection to see a nice, clear description of that grammar rule, with examples. Finally, try the exercises at the bottom of the page. You can type your answers onto the page and check your score at the end. This website is best for intermediate speakers, because you need to have a decent foundation in French vocabulary.

2. FrenchPod101: Boost Your French Listening Skills

FrenchPod101, by Innovative Language, has it all. Innovative Language is my go-to resource anytime I want to learn or improve a language. It’s perfect for language learners at any skill level.

FrenchPod101 is organised into seasons from absolute beginner to advanced. Each lesson begins with a recorded dialogue, and then two teachers discuss the vocabulary and grammar presented in the dialogue. When you’ve listened to the lesson, you can play back the dialogue a few more times and record yourself saying the lines to compare yourself with the original. Each lesson also comes with a worksheet and multiple choice test to help you remember what you’ve learned. It’s a veritable buffet of French exercies.

3. French-Resources.org: French Speaking, Reading, Listening and Writing

French-Resources.org is an all-encompassing French language website. You can practise reading, speaking, listening, writing and grammar. The audio recordings and written excerpts are of very high quality.

Click on one of the menu items across the top of the screen, then select an exercise to complete. The one downside of this site is that you can’t type your answers on the screen or get the exercises graded unless you sign up with your email address. You can sign up, or just get out a pen and paper (remember pens and paper??) and complete the exercises that way.

4. Bonjour de France: French Exercises for Exam Prep

Bonjour de France has lessons for all the main areas of French that you’d expect (reading, writing and so on), plus a bunch of more specialised exercises, like idiomatic expressions and study materials for the DELF exam. Each lesson comes with a multiple choice test at the end.

I really like this site because it sorts the lessons by both category and skill level. The only downside is that the instructions for all the exercises, even A1, are written only in French. The exercises are pretty easy to figure out without reading the instructions, but you can paste the instructions into Google Translate to get the gist if you need it.

5. Duolingo French App: Learn French on Your Smartphone

Duolingo gets you to translate different phrases between French and English – it’s really great for learning to read and write in French.

French reading takes a bit more practice to master than, say, Spanish, because of all the silent letters. So the more exposure you get to written French, the better. Use Duolingo as a supplement to some of the other exercises in this list for a well-balanced study routine.

Take a look at the Fi3M review of Duolingo for more info.

6. Simple-French: Beginner and Intermediate French Exercises

Simple-French is a comprehensive website of lessons for beginner and intermediate French learners. Each lesson covers a typical situation you might face in a French-speaking country, and includes a recorded dialogue with transcript, lesson notes on vocab, grammar and pronunciation (including individual recordings of a native speaker pronouncing key vocab), and finally an exercise to test your knowledge.

If you’re a little short on time, try out the “5 minutes of French” section for a series of mini French exercises. And if you’re really short on time, skip to “100 French sentences” for a condensed list of 100 of the most common French phrases you might need to say or understand when travelling in a French-speaking country.

7. BBC French Online: French Video Lessons, Games and More

BBC isn’t just for news and TV. There’s a whole French language section on their website filled with lessons and exercises for French language learners.

Click one of the links in the section “BBC free lessons and courses online” for a good selection of French video lessons and games, with exercises to reinforce the material.

8. edHelper French Reading Exercises

edHelper’s French site has a smallish collection of reading comprehension exercises, but every one of them is worthwhile. Most of them involve summarising a written passage or arranging a set of sentences in the correct logical order – much more useful than your average true-or-false quiz. You can do the exercises without subscribing, but you must subscribe in order to see the answer key.

9. MOddou FLE: Fun French Quizzes

MOddou FLE lets you play a variety of fun games and quizzes to test your French listening comprehension. The exercises available include matching games, multiple choice tests, fill-in-the-blanks and others.

Click “Tags” on the right-hand side to check out the games and exercises for other categories, such as “compréhension écrite” (reading comprehension), “français des affaires” (business French), and more.

10. Lawless French Writing Exercises

Lawless French came up with a pretty neat idea: French quizzes where your answers don’t have to be perfect to get points.

In these quizzes, you translate phrases into French and then grade yourself on how well you did compared to the actual translation. The points are on a scale from 0 to 5, with 5 being perfect and 0 being “horribly wrong”. I’ve never been a fan of French writing exercises that mark your entire answer wrong if you missed one little accent or committed a minor typo. So these exercises are a pretty good compromise.

In addition to these unique writing exercises, you can access all of the other Lawless French lessons and exercises from the menu on the right side of the page. They’re organised by skill level and topic.

11. MosaLingua French: Study French with Audio Flashcards

MosaLingua French, for iOS and Android, is a fun, easy-to-use app that lets you use flashcards to study thousands of French words and phrases. The best part is that you don’t have to decide which cards to study and when: MosaLingua’s spaced repetition algorithm will figure that out for you. You just have to open the app each day and practise the material that is due.

Be sure to check out the Fi3M review of MosaLingua for more info.

12. Quiz Tree: French Vocab Quizzes

The Quiz Tree has a nice set of simple multiple choice quizzes to test your knowledge of tons of French vocabulary. The quizzes are arranged by topic, and the vocab covers a pretty wide range of topics.

13. IE Languages French Listening and Repetition Exercises

These French listening exercises from IE Languages are trickier than you’d think. It’s pretty straightforward: just listen to the audio recordings and click on the words you hear. But French has quite a few sounds that English does not, so you have to listen well to select the right words.

When you’re finished the exercise, you can grade your answers at the bottom of the page. Then you can click to move on to the repetition exercise, which contains many audio recordings for you to listen and repeat, to help you distinguish the many different sounds of French.