To reach B1 in French, the level where you can follow clear news and handle most everyday situations, plan on about 360–400 hours of study from zero. That is roughly a year at one hour a day, or two years at 30 minutes a day. "Fluent" French for work takes much longer: the US Foreign Service Institute trains its diplomats full time for 30 weeks, and they also study on their own every evening. Your own speed depends mostly on how many hours you put in, how regular they are, and what you do with them.
This guide explains what the official estimates measure, and what they leave out. Then it shows what the hours look like on the page. We measured a month of French news stories at A1, A2 and B1 on Lectura: how long they are, which tenses they use, and how much French you read in a month at one or three stories a day. One result: if you read three stories a day instead of one, you meet about three times as many words often enough to remember them.
How long does it take to learn French?
For most adults, about 360–400 hours to reach B1, the first level that feels useful in daily life, and far more for French at work. The best-known estimates measure different things:
| Source | Estimate | What it measures |
|---|---|---|
| Alliance Française de Leeds | A1: 60–100 hours A2: 160–200 hours B1: 360–400 hours | Taught hours in a French course, counted from zero |
| US Foreign Service Institute (FSI) | 30 weeks, about 23 class hours a week | Full-time training to "professional working proficiency", which is far above B1 |
The Alliance figures are the most useful for most learners, because they are per level. They are cumulative: B1 means 360–400 hours in total, not on top of A2. Other Alliance Française centres publish similar ranges. For the Cambridge figures for each level, see our guide to the CEFR levels.
What does the FSI figure really measure?
The FSI figure measures how long US diplomats need, in full-time classes, to use French at work. It puts French in its easiest group for native speakers of English. Its course for French lasts 30 weeks, with about 23 hours a week in class and about 17 hours of self-study. By our arithmetic, that is about 690 class hours plus about 500 hours of homework.
Three limits matter before you use it:
- The target is high. "Professional working proficiency" means using French in meetings and reading work documents. It is well beyond B1. There is no official match to a CEFR level.
- The learners are not typical. They study full time, in very small classes, with expert teachers, and many already know other languages.
- The hours are class hours only. The self-study is on top.
So the FSI figure is not a time to B1. It is a reminder that a high level of French is a large project, even for people who study it as their job.
How long does it take to reach B1 French?
About 360–400 hours from zero, if the hours are focused study. This table turns the Alliance Française ranges into calendar time at a steady daily pace. The arithmetic is ours.
| Daily study | A2 (160–200 hours) | B1 (360–400 hours) |
|---|---|---|
| 30 minutes | 11–13 months | about 2 years |
| 1 hour | 5–7 months | 12–13 months |
| 2 hours | about 3 months | 6–7 months |
| Full time (about 23 hours a week) | about 2 months | about 4 months |
Count your hours honestly. These are hours of real attention, like an hour in a class. Ten minutes of an app on the bus is not the same as ten minutes of reading or speaking with full attention. Days you miss are hours you do not get back, so a short daily habit beats a long session once a week.
B1 also means four skills, not one. The DELF B1 exam from France Éducation international has four papers: listening, reading, writing and speaking. Each is marked out of 25. You pass with 50 out of 100 and at least 5 in each paper. A sample paper from their site is the most honest check of your level.
What does reading look like at A1, A2 and B1?
At A1 you read short sentences about one fact at a time. At B1 you read full news stories with longer sentences and more tenses. Here is one real Lectura story, a study that kept volunteers in bed to prepare astronauts for the Moon, at the three levels:
One story can be unusual, so we measured a month of Lectura's French stories. Every story has an A1, an A2 and a B1 version. Each step up adds about 100 words to a story and about five words to each sentence:
| A1 | A2 | B1 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Words per story | 152 | 245 | 364 |
| Words per sentence | about 7 | about 11 | about 16 |
| Passé composé (ils ont mangé) | 65% | 86% | 91% |
| Imparfait, common verbs (était, avait, devait) | 40% | 56% | 69% |
| Plus-que-parfait (avait montré) | 8% | 28% | 49% |
| Conditional, common verbs (pourrait, devrait) | 11% | 38% | 61% |
| Relative pronoun dont | 0% | 3% | 21% |
| Subjunctive (pour que, bien que, puisse) | under 1% | 3% | 10% |
The grammar rows show the share of stories with at least one example. Two things stand out. First, the past tenses come early. News reports things that have happened, so two in three A1 stories already use the passé composé. If you want to read real news soon, learn the passé composé in your first months, not your first year. Second, what B1 adds is mostly the "layers" of time and possibility: the plus-que-parfait (what had happened before), the conditional (what could happen) and, less often, the subjunctive. Those are the forms to work on between A2 and B1.
How we counted: all French stories published on Lectura from 22 September to 21 October 2026, each at A1, A2 and B1. We split words at spaces. Sentences end at a full stop, question mark or exclamation mark. We found grammar forms with word patterns (for example a or ont followed by a past participle) and checked samples of the matches by hand. The imparfait, conditional and subjunctive rows count only common verbs or trigger phrases, so the real shares are higher. For the reading plan below, we took eight random sets of 30 and of 90 stories at each level and averaged them. A "word form" is a spelling: mange and mangeaient count as two, and names count too. All figures are approximate. Early reader data: readers who used Lectura up to 22 October 2026. The figures are provisional.
You can see the same step in one idea from the astronaut story: "the volunteers ate and slept in bed".
Ils ont mangé et dormi au lit. Ils ont aussi fait des exercices simples.
Two short sentences in the passé composé: a list of finished facts. ("They ate and slept in bed. They also did simple exercises.")
Ils devaient rester dans la même position pour manger, dormir et faire leur toilette.
One sentence. The imparfait (devaient, "had to") describes how things were during the study.
Les participants mangeaient, dormaient et faisaient leur toilette sans quitter leur position.
Three verbs in the imparfait in one line, and sans + infinitive ("without leaving").
The B1 version goes one layer further back in time later on: Une étude précédente, réalisée en 2019 avec 36 hommes pendant 90 jours, avait montré que l’exercice conservait une partie de la force ("An earlier study, in 2019, had shown that exercise kept part of the strength"). That is a plus-que-parfait and an imparfait in one sentence, the B1 pattern from the table. For the difference between the two main past tenses, see passé composé vs imparfait.
Read the story yourself, and switch level with the tabs:
How much French can you read in a month?
One story a day at A1 is about 4,600 words a month. Three B1 stories a day is about 33,000. The number that matters more is how many words you meet again and again, because a word you see many times is much easier to remember than a word you see once. This is what a month of Lectura's French stories gives you:
| Level | 1 story a day: words read | Different word forms | Word forms met 5+ times | 3 stories a day: words read | Different word forms | Word forms met 5+ times |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| A1 | about 4,600 | about 1,400 | about 170 | about 13,700 | about 2,900 | about 500 |
| A2 | about 7,400 | about 2,150 | about 250 | about 22,100 | about 4,300 | about 750 |
| B1 | about 10,900 | about 3,100 | about 330 | about 32,800 | about 6,200 | about 1,100 |
Three stories a day does not triple the new words you see: it only doubles them. But it triples the words you see often. That is the gain that builds a reading vocabulary. These figures come from random stories on every topic. If you keep to a few topics, the same words come back even more often.
Longer stories are harder to finish, so build up slowly. Early reader data suggests that a typical Lectura reader finishes about 3 in 4 of the A1 stories they open, about 2 in 3 at A2 and about half at B1. B1 stories are also more than twice as long as A1 stories. We will keep tracking this and update this guide as more readers join.
A realistic reading plan:
- A1 (first months): one A1 story a day, alongside a course. Move to two or three when you finish them without stopping on every line.
- A2: two or three A2 stories a day. Once a week, read a story at A2 and then switch to B1 on the same story. You already know the facts, so the new tenses are easier to see. Our A1 to A2 guide covers this step in detail.
- B1: start with one B1 story a day and build up to three. At this point you read about 30,000 words a month. See how to go from A2 to B1 in French for the step before.
Reading is only part of your hours. It builds vocabulary and grammar fast, but you still need to listen, speak and write to pass the DELF or to talk with people.
What makes some learners faster than others?
Hours matter most. After that, these are the factors that change your speed:
- Regular practice. Twenty minutes every day keeps what you learnt yesterday. Two hours on Sunday loses part of it during the week.
- Other languages. If you know Spanish, Italian or Portuguese, much of French vocabulary and grammar will be familiar, and you will usually move faster.
- The right level. Material that is too easy teaches little. Material that is too hard stops you on every line. The best level is one where you follow the story and meet a few new things in each paragraph.
- Listening from the start. French spelling and French sounds are far apart: many final letters are silent, and words join in speech. Learners who mostly read often understand far more on the page than by ear. Add some listening every week, even at A1.
Can you learn French in a year?
You can reach B1 in a year at about an hour of focused study a day. At 30 minutes a day, a year usually gets you to a solid A2. Full working French in a year needs full-time study, and even then the FSI course takes about 30 weeks for its diplomats.
What level of French do you need to live in France or get citizenship?
The levels went up in 2026. Since 1 January 2026, an application for French nationality needs B2, up from B1 (decree no. 2025-648). For a first residence card, France now asks for A2 for a multi-year card and B1 for a 10-year resident card. You prove the level with a recognised diploma or test, such as the DELF, the TCF or the TEF. Many older articles still say B1 for citizenship, so check the official pages before you plan.
B2 is another large step after B1. The Alliance Française de Brisbane puts it at about 570–600 taught hours in total, compared with 380–420 for B1. Lectura stops at B1. After that, the best reading practice is French newspapers. For the exam itself, see our DELF reading preparation guide.
Choose your level and read real news in French, starting at A1 or wherever you are now. Free to start. If you are not sure which level fits, see how the three levels work.
