French Grammar tutors, lessons & classes

French grammar is the structural skeleton most learners try to bypass and most plateaus eventually come back to. Conversational fluency can carry you a long way without mastering the conditional, the subjunctive, the participle agreements, or the pronoun-placement rules that turn intermediate French into advanced French. At some point — usually somewhere between B1 and B2 — the patches stop holding. The student notices that their writing is full of small errors French speakers immediately spot, that they avoid certain constructions because they don't trust themselves, that complex sentences fall apart mid-clause. French Grammar lessons are for students at exactly that moment: solid enough to speak, frustrated enough to want the structure underneath finally to make sense.

The foundation is gendered nouns. Every French noun carries a grammatical gender (masculine or feminine), and a substantial part of French grammar cascades from that single fact. The article in front (le, la, un, une, du, de la) signals the gender. Adjectives agree with the noun's gender and number (un grand livre becomes une grande table becomes de grands livres becomes de grandes tables). Past participles agree under certain conditions (the famous accord du participe passé). Pronouns reflect gender in some forms. Get the gender wrong and the cascade collapses. Useful patterns exist: nouns ending in -tion, -sion, -ie, -ette, -eur (for emotions and qualities, like la douleur) tend feminine; nouns ending in -age, -isme, -ment, -eau, -eur (for instruments and machines, like le moteur) tend masculine. The patterns cover roughly 80 percent of cases, which is exactly why the remaining 20 percent has to be learned individually. Lessons drill articles together with vocabulary from day one and revisit gender systematically at every level above A2.

The second pillar is the verb system, organized around the three groups. The first group (-er verbs like parler, aimer, regarder) covers roughly 90 percent of French verbs, all following the same regular pattern across present, imperfect, future, conditional, present subjunctive, past participle, and present participle. The second group (-ir verbs that conjugate like finir, choisir, réussir) follows a second regular pattern. The third group is the irregular catchall: être, avoir, aller, faire, pouvoir, vouloir, devoir, savoir, venir, prendre, plus the -ir verbs that don't conjugate like finir (the partir, sortir, dormir, servir, sentir family), plus the -re verbs (vendre, attendre, répondre, mettre, écrire, lire). The full system runs to seven main tenses in active use plus a half-dozen more in literary or formal contexts. Lessons work through the system tense by tense, with reading and writing exercises that surface the gaps your speech has been quietly papering over.

The third pillar is the agreement system. French is one of the most agreement-heavy major Romance languages. Adjectives agree with nouns. Past participles in compound tenses follow specific agreement rules depending on whether they use être or avoir, and the avoir case has the famous accord du participe passé avec le COD antéposé rule (the past participle agrees with the direct object only when the direct object precedes the verb). Reflexive verbs follow their own agreement rules. The subjunctive triggers specific conjugations. The negation system requires precise placement of ne and pas, jamais, rien, personne, with the second negative element shifting depending on what is being negated. Most intermediate French speakers handle the easy agreement cases on autopilot and fall apart on the edge cases. Grammar lessons drill the edge cases until they become automatic.

The fourth pillar is the mood system. French has four moods in active use: indicative (factual), conditional (hypothetical), subjunctive (subjective or uncertain), and imperative (commands). The subjunctive is the one that trips up American English speakers most consistently because English has nearly lost it. French uses the present subjunctive after specific triggers: certain conjunctions (bien que, quoique, pour que, afin que, avant que, jusqu'à ce que), certain verbs of emotion (je suis content que, j'ai peur que), certain verbs of doubt or possibility (je doute que, il est possible que), certain superlatives, and impersonal expressions (il faut que, il est important que). The triggers are learnable; the harder work is making the subjunctive forms automatic in speech rather than something you have to consciously construct. Lessons drill the high-frequency triggers in conversation until the subjunctive arrives without thinking. The literary tenses (imperfect subjunctive, pluperfect subjunctive, past anterior) appear in Modiano and Proust and almost nowhere in spoken French; lessons cover them for reading recognition rather than active use.

The fifth pillar is the pronoun system. French has direct object pronouns (me, te, le, la, nous, vous, les), indirect object pronouns (me, te, lui, nous, vous, leur), the adverbial pronouns y and en, reflexive pronouns, stressed pronouns (moi, toi, lui, elle, nous, vous, eux, elles), and relative pronouns (qui, que, dont, où, lequel). Each set follows its own placement rules. Multiple pronouns in a single clause stack in a specific order (me te le lui y en, in that sequence). Negation wraps around the pronoun-verb cluster. Compound tenses change participle agreement based on which pronoun is present. The full system takes most intermediate students months to internalize and is the difference between halting French and fluent French. Grammar lessons drill pronoun substitution exercises systematically: take a sentence with full noun phrases, replace each with the appropriate pronoun, position them correctly, conjugate everything in agreement.

For students preparing for certifications, French Grammar lessons map well onto the DELF and DALF exam structure. The DELF B1 and B2 expect competent handling of the indicative tenses, basic conditional, and high-frequency subjunctive. The DALF C1 expects full mood system command including the literary tenses for reading, complex pronoun placement, and the agreement rules at all levels. The DALF C2 expects native-level command including the most formal written register. Our DELF specialty page covers the certification-specific prep, with French Grammar lessons as the structural foundation. Students prepping for the Quebec TEFAQ, TEFAQ-style provincial credentials, or the academic TEF/TCF can use grammar lessons as the language-skills foundation while specific test-prep covers the exam mechanics.

Between lessons, the canonical French grammar references are worth knowing about. The Bescherelle series is the French equivalent of a comprehensive English grammar reference, with separate volumes for verbs (L'art de conjuguer), grammar (La grammaire pour tous), and spelling. The free online Larousse French grammar reference is excellent for quick lookups. Lawless French (English-language) is the most accessible online French grammar resource for English speakers. Le Bon Usage by Maurice Grevisse is the authoritative French grammar reference, the equivalent of Quirk's Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language, used by French teachers, editors, and translators. For practice exercises, Le nouveau Bescherelle: l'art d'écrire and the Grammaire progressive du français (CLE International) series at A1, A2, B1, B2, C1 levels offer structured practice with answer keys. Pair grammar reference with our French pronunciation primer for the delivery side, and the French podcast roundup for listening reps.

The Strommen French Grammar roster includes native French teachers with formal teacher-training backgrounds (the French CAPES for secondary teaching, university linguistics degrees, FLE certifications for teaching French as a foreign language), francophone tutors from Belgium, Switzerland, Quebec, and francophone Africa, and longtime French-American bilinguals with deep grammar-instruction experience. Grammar teaching is a specialty inside French teaching: not every excellent conversational French teacher is also an excellent grammar teacher, because explaining the structure of French to a non-native speaker requires explicit knowledge of rules that native speakers often use without conscious awareness. The tutors on this list have that explicit knowledge. Each tutor's bio specifies their teaching background and which student profile they fit best (DELF/DALF prep, university coursework support, professional writing improvement, plateau-breaking for intermediate speakers). Pricing reflects experience. For related French specialties, our Parisian French, Business French, Conversational French, and French classes pages cover the broader family.

Lessons calibrate to your specific gap. A returning B1 student whose plateau is the subjunctive needs different lessons from a DALF C1 candidate working on literary-tense recognition for reading Proust. Both look different from a university student whose grammar coursework moved too fast through the participle-agreement rules. Each lesson is one-on-one, your tutor identifies your specific gaps in the trial, and the curriculum follows the gaps rather than a generic syllabus. The trial is free. Browse the full tutor list, pick a tutor whose bio matches your situation, and book a 30-minute session. Grammar is the slowest part of French to internalize and the fastest part of French to stop plateauing on once you have a tutor catching the specific edge cases your conversational practice has been quietly skipping.