Tag Archives: beginner french

Save the Date: Free Beginner French Comic Book

27 July, 2026Current Offers, My Comic Books, My Publications, Resourcesbeginner french, books, comics, easy french, Easy French comics, easy french graded readers, education, extensive reading, free, free stuff, French, French language, graded readers, language, language acquisition, language learning, reading, vocabulary, writingSandra Bogerd

On Thursday, Gnomeville Episode 1 will be available for free for 5 days.

What is Gnomeville Episode 1? It is arguably the easiest first read for people with an English-speaking background wanting to learn French. It achieves this by using a comic book format, exploiting the thousands of words that are the same in French and English (cognates), and introducing one new word per page. By starting with the most frequently occurring words, you will quickly know a larger proportion of the words in any French text than if the words you learn are of some random frequency. For example, in English, the word “the” makes up about 7% of any English text. This skewed distribution is similar in every language.

That’s all very well, but for it to be useful for learning, what you read has to be interesting. The main comic story is an all-ages fantasy story about a mage, a couple of gnomes, a human and a griffon going on a quest to capture a rogue dragon. The style is a cross between smurfs, Astérix, and Uncle Scrooge comics, with a slight artistic influence from Mr Men. The first episode relies a little on sight gags until more text is possible. I have seen people chuckle as they read the comic.

In addition to the main story that introduces the vocabulary, there is:

A revision story that ensures that you see the vocabulary enough times for it to become more familiar.
A crossword for extra reading and active use of the vocabulary.
A song
An extra easy story about a taxi driver.

Episode 1 has over 300 words of reading in a 28-page comic book, introducing 12 frequent words and many French-English cognates.

As you progress through the series, your receptive vocabulary gets larger, the stories get more complex, and the text length per comic increases (Episode 2: 700 words; Episode 3: 1200 words; Episode 4: 1800 words). The recommended reading rate for complete beginners is one comic per day for the first three episodes and optionally two days for Episode 4. Then, if you are still interested in reading to improve your French, try some of the books on this Amazon store specialising in beginner reading books for French learners or books from Wayside Publishing or TPRS, and build from there.

Meanwhile, you can try Episode 1 for free from Thursday to Monday. Save the date!

Episode 4: Easy Authentic Sentences from French Classics

9 May, 2026Resourcesbeginner french, comprehensible input, easy french, easy french graded readers, extensive reading, francais, French, French comprehensible input, French language, graded readers, language, language acquisition, language learning, vocabularySandra Bogerd

On this page are short extracts, titles and sentences which occur in classic French texts and only use the vocabulary of Episode 4 of my Gnomeville comic book series, that is, 39 frequently occurring words in French newspapers plus exact cognates and names. (I may update this list periodically, when I find more things with my scripts.)

Un signal !
Un danger pour nous !

Cinq semaines en ballon by Jule Verne.

Ah!
C’est vous, Tréville !

Oh !
C’est vous, c’est vous !

Les trois mousquétaires by Alexandre Dumas.

Il descend !

Elle est en prison ?

Mais qui ?

Elle est dans la prison de Mantes.

Mais silence, silence !

Qui, elle ?

Une lettre !

Ah mais !

Elle !

Impossible de continuer le commerce.

Mais ce secret ?

Signez, Milord !

Plus horrible !

Mais c’est horrible !

Qui est-elle ? et qu’est-elle ?

Mais, c’est impossible !

Ce n’est pas ELLE !

Ah ça !
Ah ça !

C’est vous, madame Poisson ?

Ça c’est grave !

C’est une supposition.

C’est un secret.

C’est ça !

Oh ! c’est elle ! c’est elle !

Le Canada est content de vous !

C’est nous !
Nous, Blanche et Rose !

C’est elle , n’est-ce pas ?
C’est elle.

Qu’est-ce que c est que ça ?

C’est ça , Lieutenant.

Est-ce vous , Adolphe ?

Et ça , qu’est-ce que c’est ?

Mais c’est abominable !

C’est pour ça.

C’est pour vous.

Avec elle , c’est impossible !
Ah !

Ah !
Et une lettre de madame Bonaparte.

C’est terrible, ça !

Oh !
Impossible de refuser.

Zdenko a de la consolation, consolation, consolation !

Entre !

Je n’entre pas.

Un ordre de Madame.
Un ordre de Madame ?

C’est un monstre !

C’est une lettre !

Mais c’est une fortune !

C’est ça qui est une transition !
Ah !

Oh ! qu’est-ce qu’il a ?

Ah ! c’est vous, baron !

(Hamlet entre.)

C’est possible ! mais … ce n’est pas certain.

C’est grave, ça !

Il est avec nous.

Mais la Bastille ! la Bastille !

Ça n’est pas possible !

Est-elle noble !

La phrase est-elle simple ?

Mais il est innocent !

Continuez, madame.

Un aide de camp entre.

Mais qui est-ce ? … Qui est-ce ?

Mais c’est Julien !

Qu’est-ce qui arrive ?

Elle est en France !

C’est d’elle !

Mais c’est un commencement , c’est un signe.

Mais, madame, c’est impossible.

Elle est l’unique force.

Bootstrapping the Three Musketeers

23 October, 2025My Publications, Personal, Resources, Writingbeginner french, extensive reading, French, French language, french novels for beginners, graded readers, language, language acquisition, language learning, vocabularySandra Bogerd

Those who have visited my blog this year will know that I have put up some “filtered French”, such as a list of the most common one-word sentences in French classic literature, and sentences that fit the highly constrained vocabulary of my comic books. After musing on language acquisition, in particular how babies learn, not to mention our experience of picking up a few words and phrases in a foreign language by ear, I thought I’d try a different approach. This has resulted in producing a book (with more volumes to come) where I filter Les trois mousquetaires, and add vocabulary one word at a time based on which word will complete the most sentences. Using a combination of manual and automatic filtering, I have created extracts that have sufficient repetition in their vocabulary for people to become familiar with the words.

It has been fascinating to see what happens as I add each new word. The algorithm tends to find dialogue first, gradually increasing in average sentence length, then short non-dialogue sentences – after the 93rd word of vocabulary was added.

Anyway, if you’d like to have a look, it’s on Amazon, with a substantial preview.

(Affiliate links in this post.)

Picture Books for Beginners in French

6 July, 2025Resourcesbeginner french, easy french, extensive reading, French, French language, graded readers, language, language acquisition, linguistics, vocabularySandra Bogerd

A while back, while reading what I could (which is not very much) in Japanese, I noticed that once you knew the writing system, you could immediately read some picture books that are just illustrated dictionaries, as long as there is a direct correspondence between the text and the image. With this in mind, I thought I would compile a list of picture books that beginners in French can read right now. While I don’t have any that completely fall into that category, I have some that are easy for those who have the vocabulary of Episode 2 of the “I can’t believe I’m reading French” Gnomeville comic book series, being the 20 most frequently occurring words in French newspapers.

As the Gnomeville comic book series focuses on frequent words, which tend to be function words, learners don’t get exposed to common concrete nouns, adjectives and verbs, which tend to be much lower down the word frequency list. However, research suggests that concrete nouns are easier to learn and remember than function words. So, it might be valuable to read picture books in parallel with the comics. I don’t think it is worth memorising what you read, but with repeated exposure – especially with pictures – the words will become familiar.

With all that preamble out of the way, here is my list. I only have a few items so far, but will add any I find later. The episode numbers indicate the assumed vocabulary, where the only words that are not within that vocabulary are clearly defined by the illustrations. Where there is an asterisk (*) after the episode number, it means you need an additional word or two for complete coverage.

Title	Author	Lengh	Read After Episode	Comments
Un chat	Roger Paré	110w	2	This short book adds a new item to the picture with each page. Annoyingly, it appears to be out of print, but if you access Libby via your library, you might be able to read it there.
Un éléphant	Roger Paré	110w	2	This short book adds a new item to the picture with each page. Annoyingly, it appears to be out of print, but if you access Libby via your library, you might be able to read it there.
Le vert	Anna C. Peterson	31w	1*	This short book introduces various items that are green. You could read this after Episode 1, assuming you recognise the cognate *couleur* and note that *cet* means “this”. Once again, this is not available on-line, but can probably be read via Libby, which is where I found it. The rest of the series uses a bit more vocabulary but would be easy for those who have studied French for a few weeks.
Une maison	Annette Smith	24w	1*	This is a level 1 book in the GB+ nouveaux lecteurs series. The pictures illustrate the nouns. All you need for this one is un, une, and *voici* (here is).
De grosse choses	Annette Smith	34w	1*	This is a level 1 book in the GB+ nouveaux lecteurs series. The pictures illustrate the nouns. All you need for this one is un, une, est, and *gros*/grosse (big). The title includes “choses”, meaning “things”.
Maman	Annette Smith	16w	1*	This is a level 1 book in the GB+ nouveaux lecteurs series. The pictures illustrate the verbs. All you need to know is that “*maman*” means mum/mom.
Les animaux	Annette Smith	35w	2*	This is a level 1 book in the GB+ nouveaux lecteurs series. The pictures illustrate the nouns. All you need for this one is le, la, l’, les, est, d’, and *ici* (here). The title includes the cognate “animaux” (animals).
Moi	Annette Smith	16w	3	This is a level 1 book in the GB+ nouveaux lecteurs series. The pictures illustrate the verbs. All you need for this one is je. The title means “me”.
Je me déguise	Annette Smith	32w	3*	This is a level 1 book in the GB+ nouveaux lecteurs series. The pictures illustrate the nouns. All you need for this one is je, un, and *suis* (am). The title means “I disguise myself”.
Nous sortons	Annette Smith	39w	4*	This is a level 1 book in the GB+ nouveaux lecteurs series. The pictures illustrate the nouns. All you need for this one is nous, à, la, au, de, l’, and *allons* (go). The title means “We go out.”

(This page includes Amazon affiliate links.)

Free offer of Episode 1 on Kindle

17 October, 2017Current Offers, My Comic Booksbeginner french, comic books, comics, competitions, extensive reading, fantasy, free, free stuff, French easy reader, French graded reader, French language, French reader, graded readers, language, languagesSandra Bogerd

Episode 1 of beginner French comic Gnomeville, is currently available for free as a Kindle ebook. Write a positive review on either Amazon or Goodreads by Sunday 22nd October and get a free pdf of the crossword from the comic. The best review will receive a free narration audio file. https://www.amazon.com/Gnomeville-Episode-Introductions-Believe-Reading-ebook/dp/B01N5JGI7O/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1508028141&sr=1-1

Get your download quick. Wednesday 18th is the last day (US time zone, I think).