Practising French conversation is, for many English speakers, about getting school French to come out of the mouth. You can read a menu and follow a slow film with subtitles, and then someone in a shop answers you at normal speed and the sentence you prepared is gone. A tutor, a language exchange, a course, a drill app, an AI chatbot and a daily companion each fill a different part of that gap. Pick by where yours is.
The six kinds below are in no order of merit. Each was designed for one problem, and not for another.
Where French conversation gets hard
French is close to English in vocabulary and far from it in sound. Words that look familiar are pronounced in ways you did not expect, endings you read are not said, and words join together, so les amis comes out as one word with a z in the middle. Listening is where many learners first stall: the French they know on paper does not match what reaches their ears.
Speaking brings its own choices. Tu or vous, which English settles with one "you". Passé composé or imparfait, where English says "I went" or "I used to go" without thinking about it. Être or avoir as the helper verb in the past. None of these is hard to understand. All of them are hard to decide quickly, while somebody waits for the end of your sentence.
The only way that gets easier is use: saying it, hearing it back, and saying it again, often enough that the choice stops being one.
A tutor: an hour with a person
A tutor is a paid human, usually booked by the hour, often through a marketplace where each tutor sets their own rate. You get somebody who hears your vowels, tells you when je suis allé should have been j'allais, and explains why. A good tutor also notices which sentences you avoid.
A tutor is there when you booked them. Between one hour and the next, the French often waits, and part of the next hour goes over the same ground. If your problem is that nobody qualified has ever heard you speak, a tutor is the direct answer, and for pronunciation in particular a person who can hear you is hard to replace.
A language exchange: French for your English
An exchange pairs you with someone who speaks French and wants to practise English, in person, over a video call or in an exchange app, most of which are free to use at their core. A native speaker knows how people talk now, which phrases sound like a textbook, and how Paris differs from Montreal or Brussels.
Half of each conversation is your partner's practice, and you both need time on the same day. A chat between two volunteers can go quiet when either of you gets busy. If you want a real French speaker and are happy to give your time back, an exchange is hard to match on price.
A course: the system behind the sentences
A course hands you French in a set order, as an evening class or as a course app. It is where the system gets explained: agreement, the past tenses, the pronouns that stack before the verb. If school French left you with pieces but no frame, a course puts the frame back.
Speaking time in a course is usually short. In a class you share it, and an app tends to test you rather than talk with you. A course is built for structure, less for hours of your own speech.
A drill app: the daily habit
A drill app gives you short, gamified exercises of a few minutes, with daily goals, reminders and a count of the days in a row. It keeps vocabulary fresh and makes a little French every day easy to start.
An exercise usually hands you most of the sentence. Conversation asks you to find it yourself, at the other person's speed. Many learners keep a drill app for the habit and add something else for talk.
An AI chatbot: on demand, set up by you
A general AI chatbot answers in French whenever you like, explains the subjunctive again without impatience, and plays the scene you set: a call to a landlord in Lyon, small talk at a work dinner. For rehearsing one situation, that is very handy.
You steer all of it: how strictly it corrects you, tu or vous, the topic, the length of the answers. It usually does not start a conversation on its own. If you like directing your own practice, that is a strength.
A daily companion: conversation across an ordinary week
A companion is a character with a life in a real city, whom you write to in French on most days, who replies, remembers what you said and picks it up again the next day. Parla is this kind of tool. Its companions are AI and say so in their opening messages, the chat runs on Telegram with text and voice notes both ways, and corrections arrive inside the reply: the companion uses the right form and carries on. At most two patterns a week are raised.
A companion may also start the conversation, but only in a chat you have already written in and never in your quiet hours. A new conversation from one companion starts at most once a day and four times a week; beyond that, a companion may write to wish you luck with something you mentioned was coming, or to ask afterwards how it went. Once a week a letter counts what happened: it comes on Sunday, or on Monday if Sunday was missed.
The limits are real. It starts at roughly A2, so it suits someone whose school French still holds a simple conversation, not a complete beginner. It is not a course, a companion is sometimes wrong, and no person is involved, so it cannot do what a tutor does for your accent. If your problem is that French only happens once a week, that is the gap it was built for.
At a glance
| Kind | Who starts | When it is there | A person involved |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tutor | you, by booking | at the booked time | yes |
| Language exchange | either of you | when you are both free | yes |
| Course | the syllabus | set times, or at your own pace | in a class, yes |
| Drill app | you, often after a reminder | any time, in short sessions | no |
| AI chatbot | you | any time | no |
| A companion such as Parla | either of you | most days, inside the hours you allow | no |
Which gap is yours
If you cannot follow spoken French, you need hours of real speech, from an exchange, a tutor or voice notes. If the system has gone, a course. If nobody has ever corrected your pronunciation, a tutor. If you have one conversation ahead of you, a chatbot set up for it. If French happens once a week and fades in between, something that is there on ordinary days.
These kinds of tool combine well, because they fill different gaps. The point is to know which gap each piece fills, so you are not paying for the same one twice.
