Tag Archives: easy french

Gnomeville Comics are Easier than I Thought

18 April, 2026My Comic Books, My Publications, Research, Resourcescomics, comprehensible input, easy french, Easy French comics, education, extensive reading, French, French comics, French comprehensible input, French language, graded readers, language, language acquisition, language learning, readability, vocabulary, writingSandra Bogerd

On reviewing my readability measure results for various items in my collection, I suddenly thought, “hang on, how can the expected vocabulary size for Gnomeville Episode 1 be 25 when only 12 very frequent words are introduced?” Clearly something had gone wrong somewhere.

I blame the fact that part of my analysis is manual, and I probably didn’t follow the procedure very well. I run various scripts to produce a ranked list of words in the text in the frequency order of a large corpus of written French (mostly from Project Gutenberg). The manual bit is counting up cognates, or at least starting at the least frequent word end and counting up until I find 5% of the words that are not cognates or names. I think I went astray previously by having a less reliable process.

Results can differ depending on decisions that are made, such as whether to include titles (which I treat as sentences), the “Présentation” section that has brief notes about each character, and what is counted as a cognate. It is reasonably clear-cut for Gnomeville, but for other texts, it is less clear. Should “habiter” be considered a cognate due to its similarity to “inhabit”? And there are other words that are cognates in the linguistic sense but not particularly obvious from a learner perspective. The choice of general frequency list will also make a difference. Spoken text has different characteristics to written text, especially in French. Also, the very frequent words used for Episode 1 and 2 are the 20 most frequent in French newspapers, which is not the same set of words as any other corpus of text. The text I use for calculating expected vocabulary size has some of those words at lower ranks (“se” at 25, “au” at 31, and “on” at 40), which explains why there was the potential for the expected vocabulary size to be larger than the number of words introduced. But unless those words made up about 5% of the extract it was unlikely they would receive those scores.

Anyway, on revisiting my incorrect assessments of the Gnomeville episodes, I have the following updated vocabulary sizes.

Episode	Old Expected Vocab Size	New Expected Vocab Size	New Readability Score
1	25	3	2.20
2	16	14	3.23
3	40	17	3.83
4		15	3.66

You may notice that Episode 4 has a lower expected vocabulary size at 95% and a lower readability score than Episode 3. There’s not a lot in it, but Episode 3 had longer sentences in the extract.

Well, there you are. Gnomeville’s expected vocabulary size is much smaller than originally calculated – at least for Episodes 1 and 3.

Review: Le Français par la méthode nature

16 April, 2026Resources, Reviewscomprehensible input, easy french, extensive reading, French, French comprehensible input, french graded readers, French language, graded readers, language, language acquisition, language learning, vocabularySandra Bogerd

I’ve seen this book by Arthur M. Jensen mentioned a few times and I thought it was worth a look, given its philosophy. This book, which was originally published in 1958 (and still in copyright, according to the death+70 rule), is a reading-based introduction to French, with the pronunciation of the text in IPA under each line. The text is quite mundane and repetititve, but the repetition is intentional to allow the language to be acquired by reading. Things get a little more interesting after a dozen or so chapters. A similar approach is used in several (relatively entertaining) stories in French, such as those by Wayside Publishing and TPRS, in addition to other languages. It is also used for an engaging story in Old English called Osweald Bera.

Jensen’s book makes no assumption about the learner’s first language. There are no glosses or definitions in another language. There are pictures to illustrate nouns that are introduced and names of characters talked about. This makes it a good choice for those with a language background that is not English, since many books assume English (or another common European language). It may be less useful for those who have no prior exposure to the Roman alphabet. That would need to be learnt first.

I ran my usual analysis on the first approximately 100 words and confirmed that based on my measures, it is easy French. Its type-token ratio (measure of repetition and learnability from text) is the lowest I have found so far, meaning there is a high chance of learning the vocabulary when reading the text. Its overall score, encompassing expected vocabulary at 95% coverage and sentence length (assuming that the text above and below the pictures on the first page, such as “une fille”, were sentences) was 4.84, making it the 7th easiest in my small table of the readability of French texts for learners.

One weakness of the text is that it is a bit old-fashioned. A lot of the conversation examples are not how people speak nowadays. Also, some of the words are more what would be read rather than spoken, such as “demeurer”, which I only come across in texts, whereas to my knowledge, “habiter” has been the most common verb to use for decades.

Ayan Academy has audio of many chapters on Youtube. This can be useful simple audio comprehensible input.

In summary, its strengths are that there is no assumption of first language, it is comprehensive, and there is a high chance of learning the language from reading due to its high level of repetitivness. Its weaknesses are it is dull and dated.

Gnomeville Episode 4 Soon to be Released!

26 March, 2026My Comic Books, My Publicationscomics, comprehensible input, easy french, extensive reading, French, french comics for beginners, French comprehensible input, French language, graded readers, language, language acquisition, language learning, vocabulary, writingSandra Bogerd

Slowly (6 years!) but surely, my next comic for learners of French has been completed! I am holding a launch party for it on Sunday, where attendees will hear the Gnomeville songs performed, and have the opportunity to buy the comics at greatly reduced prices. Then, the physical comics will appear in the Square store, and not too much later, I intend to publish the ebook “wide”, as they call it, meaning it will be available from Kobo, Apple, and other ebook platforms. I intend to make Episodes 1 to 3 available in a bundle format for the platforms that haven’t had the comics before. So, more work to do. But first, we have the launch on Sunday!

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.)

Publishers of Graded Readers in French

28 June, 2025Uncategorizedbook-review, books, easy french, extensive reading, fiction, French, french for beginners, French language, graded readers, language, language acquisition, language learning, readingSandra Bogerd

I thought I would put links to the publishers I’m aware of who sell graded readers in French. As usual, some have disappeared, but some still exist.

Wayside Publishing have some beginner readers that work well for those with an English speaking background. They have strict vocabulary control, using a very small vocabulary, lots of French-English cognates, and repetition. The smallest vocabulary, in Édi l’elephant, is 55 words in a text of 2100 words.

TPRS Books also has a range of books that follow the same approach of small vocabularies and much repetition, with some using base vocabularies below 100 in size.

CLE International have over 300 graded readers, some targeting specific age groups, and covering levels from A1 to B2. Their rebranded Lectures Découverte series (was Collection Découverte) are generally easier than A2 readers from other publishers (and other series) in my experience and their A1.1 stories are very easy compared to those typically labelled A1. I’m slightly frustrated that vocabulary sizes are no longer published, since they are quite relevant to the person reading, if not for the person assessing language level.

CIDEB also have a good range of graded readers (in multiple languages).

Editions Maison des Langues have a small range of graded readers. I get the feeling that they used to have more, since I’m sure I have read some that are not listed on this page. I have read and enjoyed the Alex Leroc series and various other books. From memory the A2 offerings felt more difficult than the CIDEB ones of the same level.

ELI have materials in multiple languages, and publish some beginner books that claim to be based on 100 words of vocabulary. I have a few of their books. The children’s A1 books are much easier than their adult A1 books, which I found quite challenging (in German). Note that if you are learning multiple languages, some of these stories are published in additional languages.

Hachette have their LFF range of graded readers, going from A1 to B2. It looks that they currently sell via specific distributors in different countries. I’ve read some of their A1 Albert et Folio books, which are easy A1 stories. I think the adolescent A1 stories are slightly harder. I’ve also read some of the A2 stories for adolescents. The B1 stories start to use passé simple.

Didier have a small collection of graded readers from A1 to B2. I’ve read Victor Hugo habite chez moi, which was pretty cute from memory. The Didier website is pretty horrible to navigate though.

The Danish company Egmont has their Easy Readers, which are stories that have been adapted to learners. They are available via Languages Direct, who also sell readers from other publishers. Teen Readers is also published by Egmont. You can buy some books online at Amazon and elsewhere.

Oxford University Press and Cambridge University Press used to have graded reader series suited to those with an English-speaking background. Some may be findable in the secondhand market.

National Textbook Company also seems to have disappeared, sadly. They had some beginner and intermediate level readers that were quite good.

In addition to these major publishing houses, there are independent authors publishing stories for people learning French. I have links to representative works in my list of French graded readers.

Beginner French Resources

23 March, 2025Resourcesapplied linguistics, computational linguistics, easy french, education, extensive reading, French, French language, graded readers, language, language acquisition, language learning, vocabulary, writingSandra Bogerd

tldr: Easy French sentences from classics here.

Years ago I was tinkering with creating my beginner comic book in French, and then researching what made things easy to read in French for those with English speaking background. I learnt that the two main aspects that characterise text difficulty are grammar and vocabulary, with other aspects usually having a much smaller role to play. Through my own research, inspired by my own frustration and anecdotal experience, I learnt that for French the typical readability measures that use word length or even how common a word is for vocabulary difficulty just don’t work for people with English speaking backgrounds. This is because so many of the longer “difficult” words in French are identical to those in English, or close enough not to matter. My experiment demonstrated that you may as well just use sentence length to decide on difficulty, being the simplest measure of grammatical complexity. Despite this, vocabulary matters. It’s just that the words that are difficult are differently distributed than for languages that don’t have this peculiar French-English relationship.

In another of my experiments, I tried to filter a large collection of French text to find extracts that are easy for English speakers. While the extracts that are very easy are not long, they do exist. It’s a matter of playing around with the constraints to get something sizeable. It should also be noted that the text I used consists of French classics, which can be challenging to read. Anyway, it’s been a while since I looked at this. The other day I created a page on this site that contains all the sentences and extracts I found that restrict themselves to the vocabulary and grammar of Episode 1 of my comic book, (le, la, les, de, du, des, et, est, se, que, and present tense third person singular of -er verbs) plus cognates and names. I hope it is useful. More to come.

It’s not too late for your free beginner French comic from Amazon

19 March, 2025Current Offers, My Comic Books, Resourcesbande dessinée, comics, easy french, easyfrench, extensive reading, French, French language, graded readers, language, language acquisition, language learningSandra Bogerd

Episode 2 of the Gnomeville beginner French comic book series is still available for free on Amazon until Friday. Episode 1 is still discounted on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in a countdown deal that increases every couple of days. I hope you enjoy it!