French Grammar: A Complete Guide by CEFR Level

French grammar is easiest to learn in the order the CEFR scale builds it, because each level assumes the one below. Studying it alphabetically - the way most reference books are arranged - is why so many learners meet the subjunctive before they can reliably conjugate the present tense.

This guide sets out what grammar sits at each level from A1 to C1, which structures are genuinely required at each stage, and which ones you can safely postpone. The sequence below is the one we use to grade stories across 61 levels, so it is an order of acquisition rather than an order of reference.

What order should you learn French grammar in?

Six blocks, in this order. Each one is unusable without the previous.

Two things worth noticing. The count goes down as the level goes up: there is less new machinery at C1 than at A1. And the difficulty still goes up, because the later material is about choosing between forms you already know rather than learning new ones.

What grammar does A1 actually cover?

A1 is the mechanical layer, and it is bigger than people expect - the largest single block on the scale.

Gender and articles come first, before any verb work, because they attach to every noun you will ever learn. The endings are far more reliable than their reputation - -tion, -ité and -ette are feminine, -age, -ment and -eau are masculine, each above 97% when measured across 24,689 nouns. What fails is the rule everyone is taught first: -e means feminine only 64.7% of the time, which is why le problème, le musée and le groupe feel like betrayals.

The practical consequence: learn every noun with its article attached. Not maison but une maison. This is the single highest-return habit in early French, and it costs nothing at A1 and a great deal to retrofit at B1.

Then the present tense, in three waves. Regular -er verbs, then the four irregulars you cannot avoid - être, avoir, aller, faire - then the modals pouvoir, vouloir, devoir, savoir. After that, -ir and -re verbs and the reflexives.

• Je me lève à sept heures. - I get up at seven.
• Nous allons au marché. - We’re going to the market.

A1 finishes with the question and negation systems, possessives and demonstratives, and the partitive article - du pain, de la viande, des œufs - which has no English equivalent and is quietly one of the most frequent structures in the language.

Why do the past tenses make A2 the real beginning?

A2 is where French grammar becomes French rather than a vocabulary list with verbs. The whole level turns on one contrast.

The passé composé comes in two halves. First with avoir, which covers most verbs - four compound tenses in five, in our count: j’ai parlé, il a fini, nous avons attendu. Then with être, which covers a closed list of movement and state verbs plus every reflexive - and which forces past participle agreement with the subject:

• Elle est allée à Lyon. - She went to Lyon. (extra -e, silent)
• Ils se sont levés tôt. - They got up early. (extra -s, silent)

Both of those endings are invisible in speech and compulsory in writing, which is why reading and writing pull ahead of listening at this level.

Then the imparfait, which is formed regularly from the nous form of the present - nous parlons → je parlais - with exactly one irregular stem in the whole language, être → j’étais.

And then the contrast, which is the real content of A2 and the error that survives longest:

• J’écoutais de la musique quand il est arrivé. - I was listening to music when he arrived.

Imparfait is the background, passé composé is the event that interrupts it. English gives you no cue, because “I listened” and “I was listening” do not map cleanly onto the French pair. It gets its own article - passé composé vs imparfait, including the six verbs that change meaning between the two - and it is the one grammar point where extra reading beats extra rules.

A2 also adds y and en - introduced in one unit here, though the full pronoun order that ends y → en is not finished until the last unit of C1 - the object pronouns, the future simple, the present conditional, and the first relative pronouns - qui, que, où, all three inside the hundred commonest words of French, which is why they arrive this early.

What does B1 add that B2 assumes?

B1 is the connective tissue. Nothing here is conceptually hard; the difficulty is that there is a lot of it and none of it is optional at B2.

• Plus-que-parfait - the past before the past. J’avais déjà mangé quand elle est arrivée. - I had already eaten when she arrived.
• Gérondif - en marchant, en attendant: simultaneity and manner in one word.
• Dont and lequel - the relative pronouns that carry a preposition. Le livre dont je t’ai parlé. - The book I told you about. Dont is the hardest of the set for a measurable reason: it is the 91st commonest word in books and only the 402nd in speech.
• The passive, including its compound tenses, and the French habit of avoiding it with on.
• Reported speech in the present, which is the rehearsal for the B2 sequence of tenses.
• Cause, consequence, concession - parce que, puisque, donc, bien que, pourtant. These are what make a paragraph hold together, and they are heavily weighted in DELF marking.

One item on this list is worth flagging because it is rarely taught and constantly heard: at B1 you should know that spoken French drops the ne in negation. Je sais pas. - I don’t know. Not an error, just register.

Why is B2 the hardest grammar step in French?

Because it stops being about forms and starts being about choices. B1 to B2 is the longest single step on the CEFR scale even though B2 contains fewer grammar points than B1 - why that step is a replacement rather than an expansion is worth understanding before you attempt it.

The subjunctive arrives properly here. The endings are regular for most verbs; what is hard is knowing what triggers it - and the usual obligation-doubt-emotion rule is unreliable enough that the trigger list is worth learning as fixed blocks instead.

• Il faut que vous veniez. - You have to come.
• Bien qu’elle soit fatiguée, elle continue. - Although she is tired, she keeps going.

The sequence of tenses in reported speech is the other half. Present becomes imparfait, passé composé becomes plus-que-parfait, and the imparfait stays put:

• « Je travaillais hier » → Elle a dit qu’elle travaillait hier. - The imparfait does not shift.

Add the conditional past for regret and unrealised hypotheses, the future perfect, and recognition of the passé simple - a smaller job than it looks, since 97.6% of it is third person - and you have the syllabus that a DELF B2 candidate is marked on. If you are working toward naturalisation, B2 is now the legal threshold too - the 2026 rules are set out in the guide to French levels for citizenship.

What is left at C1?

Style, not structure. C1 introduces very little new machinery and spends its levels on control: the ne explétif that means nothing (avant qu’il ne parte), literary negation with ne alone, free indirect speech, cleft sentences and emphasis (c’est moi qui l’ai fait), and production of the passé simple for those who write formally.

The C1 skill is register: knowing that je ne sais pas, je sais pas and j’ignore all mean the same thing and belong in three different situations.

Which French grammar rules actually cause the mistakes?

Four, in order of how long they survive.

Passé composé versus imparfait. Persists to C1 in writing. Fixed by volume of input, not by rules - the working test is here.

Gender. Not conceptually hard, just unbounded. Fixed by always storing the article with the noun.

Past participle agreement with a preceding direct object. Les lettres que j’ai écrites. - The letters I wrote. Silent, invisible, and heavily marked in exams.

Preposition choice after a verb. Commencer à, finir de, penser à, parler de, jouer au football but jouer du piano. There is no system; these are learned as pairs, which is exactly what reading does for you.

How should you actually study French grammar?

Rules give you recognition; input gives you production. You need both, in that order, and the ratio matters more than the method.

Read the rule once so you can spot the structure, then meet it fifty times in context so you can use it without stopping. That is why grammar taught in isolation feels understood and stays unusable - the understanding was never the missing part. The method is set out in how to learn French by reading, the hour budgets behind each level in how long it takes to learn French, and how grammar fits alongside the other three skills in the full roadmap.

This is the design behind Gallus: every one of the 424 grammar points above is attached to a level, and every level is taught through graded stories that use it, so the rule arrives with the examples rather than before them.

Start from the level you are actually at rather than the one you would like to be at. The full syllabus, unit by unit, is published on the CEFR levels hub.