The time you spend stuck in traffic or commuting to work doesn’t have to be wasted. With the information in this post, you can use that time to improve your French skills.
Let’s explore how to learn French while driving with five fantastic resources. There’s something here for every level, from beginner to advanced.
This audio-based program is an accessible language-learning resource designed for those who want to start speaking French quickly and confidently.
It focuses on practical vocabulary and everyday conversational skills, emphasizing listening and speaking over memorizing grammar rules. The course uses a relaxed, stress-free teaching method.
You’ll learn through repetition and building on previously acquired knowledge. Suitable for complete beginners or those looking to refresh their skills, this course can help you develop a natural French accent and understand fundamental structures.
Coffee Break French offers a popular (and free!) language-learning podcast designed for beginners to advanced learners. You’ll learn French in short, manageable episodes.
The episodes build progressively, allowing listeners to gradually improve their language skills. With dialogues, cultural insights and practical language tips, this podcast offers an engaging way to learn French.
“News in Slow French” is an educational podcast designed for French language learners who want to improve their listening skills. There are episodes for beginner to advanced learners.
The podcast presents current events and cultural topics at a deliberately slower pace, making it easier to follow along. The content is engaging and diverse, covering a wide range of subjects, from politics to lifestyle.
Each episode includes explanations of vocabulary and idiomatic expressions, so you can expand your linguistic knowledge while staying informed about world affairs.
Pimsleur is a popular language learning program that can improve your French listening and speaking skills through a series of audio lessons.
The Pimsleur method emphasizes the natural acquisition of language skills by simulating the way we learn our native language. Each lesson involves listening and repeating phrases, responding to prompts and gradually building on previously learned material.
Every new topic is introduced in the context of a conversation or exchange, helping you to internalize vocabulary and grammar and gain conversational proficiency.
This is a compilation of 50 short conversations in French, each less than a minute long. While the entire album is only 33 minutes long, you’ll want to repeat the conversations multiple times.
They cover commoneveryday scenarios such as arriving at the airport, taking a fitness class and visiting the doctor. This means you’ll learn practical language you can use in real life.
For years, studying a new language was confined to the classroom. But with the resources and technology of today, learning French while driving is much easier. Beyond convenience, there are many other benefits to this way of learning:
Go at your own pace. When you learn in the car, you’re free to pause or rewind whenever you need to. Likewise, you can do some revision practice or go over a previous lesson as needed. The content is available for you to use as you wish, at your preferred pace.
Learn a little every day. Taking on huge chunks of new information at a time is rarely conducive to effective learning. Instead, you should practice little bits of language every day. By studying in the car, you can access brief lessons and make gradual, consistent progress.
Choose your own topics. We often learn best when we focus on topics we’re interested in. When learning in the car, you can choose each lesson, honing in on specific topics when you please. For example, you might enjoy a French podcast about space travel or some French rap songs.
Make use of travel time. Your commute doesn’t have to be lost time. By committing each journey to a specific lesson, you make use of “wasted” time and free up more hours in the evening to relax and unwind or spend time with friends and family.
Whatever your level, there’s something out there for you to make learning French while driving completely doable.
You no longer have to cram study sessions into your limited time on evenings and weekends. What will you do with all your newly earned free time?
If you like learning French on your own time and from the comfort of your smart device, then I'd be remiss to not tell you about FluentU.
FluentU has a wide variety of great content, like interviews, documentary excerpts and web series, as you can see here:
FluentU brings native French videos with reach. With interactive captions, you can tap on any word to see an image, definition and useful examples.
For example, if you tap on the word "crois," you'll see this:
Practice and reinforce all the vocabulary you've learned in a given video with learn mode. Swipe left or right to see more examples for the word you’re learning, and play the mini-games found in our dynamic flashcards, like "fill in the blank."
All throughout, FluentU tracks the vocabulary that you’re learning and uses this information to give you a totally personalized experience. It gives you extra practice with difficult words—and reminds you when it’s time to review what you’ve learned.
Hannah Lamarque Last updated: 
