French Grammar Practice Online

French grammar is where a lot of otherwise decent vocabulary goes to die. You can recognise a word and still not know whether the sentence needs imparfait or passé composé, whether the past participle agrees, or why a pronoun moved. Online grammar practice is useful when it is tied to a CEFR band and scored against a closed bank — not when it is an infinite feed of decontextualised "choose the correct article" items with no memory of what you missed last week.

My Path's General French bank includes grammar as one of four written skills, across A1–C2, in a bank of about 576 items. You practise at one CEFR level per sitting. This article is the grammar path. For the whole product, see the French practice test from A1 to C2. For the other written skills, use reading and vocabulary. For a weekly loop, see learn French with practice tests.

Grammar as a skill, not a vibe

People describe themselves as "bad at French grammar" the way they say they are bad at maths: as a personality trait. It is usually a stack of unpractised systems. Articles, clitic pronouns, tense choice, mood, agreement, and word order do not fail together. A sitting that reports 55% grammar at B1 is a start. A sitting that lets you retry the misses, then shows a topic bar for the structures that keep failing, is practice.

My Path is an assessment platform. Education is exam preparation: study, practise, pass. Grammar practice here is item-based. You will not get a human tutor rewriting your paragraph. You will get CEFR-shaped items, a score, an error list, and the option to retry wrong and flagged questions. That is narrower than a course. It is also harder to hide from.

There is no listening and no speaking in this bank. Oral grammar (liaison, mute e, what you can get away with in speech) is out of scope. Written control is in scope.

What grammar looks like at each band

These are working descriptions of written grammar, not official descriptors and not a claim that we administer DELF or DALF. My Path is not affiliated with France Éducation international.

A1. Present tense of common verbs, simple negation, gender of frequent nouns, basic articles, subject pronouns. The job of practice is to make the defaults automatic so you stop spending working memory on je suis / j'ai.

A2. Past vs present in simple narratives, near future, object pronouns in easy patterns, comparatives, more reliable agreement on nearby past participles. Failures here are often "I understood the story and still picked the wrong tense."

B1. Relative clauses, more pronouns, plus-que-parfait in sequence, basic subjunctive triggers, reported speech starting to appear. This is the band where "I can get by" stops matching the written system.

B2. Mood and tense in longer sentences, register (tu/vous is the least of it), passive and causative, tighter control of agreement at a distance, connectors that change clause structure. A B2 grammar miss is often not a forgotten ending. It is a structure you never automated.

C1. Flexible control: you can choose a structure for emphasis or style, not only for correctness. Practice at C1 is mostly residual holes — the one relative-pronoun pattern, the one tense sequence — not "learn the present tense."

C2. Fine distinctions and almost no tax. If you are honestly C2 in grammar, you are hunting exceptions and register, not conjugations. Use C2 sittings to confirm, not to learn the system from zero.

If you are unsure, sit A2 or B1 first. A demolished C1 paper teaches panic. A clean A2 paper with three stubborn topics teaches a list.

Why one CEFR band per sitting

Mixing A2 and B2 grammar in one paper produces a number that does not correspond to any course, any exam, or any next action. The B2 items dominate the feeling of the sitting; the A2 items inflate the score. My Path refuses mixed CEFR pools. Pick several levels and you still get one band. Language tests label this axis Level, not Grade. The rationale is the same as in maths: why grade bands matter.

Stay on a band until retries stop being the same structures. Then move. Vanity jumping is how people stay "intermediate" for five years.

How to set up a grammar sitting

On the Education hub, General French is on the Practice shelf. Before you start:

• Pick Level (one of A1–C2).
• Prefer a topic filter when you already know the hole (tense, agreement, pronouns). Unfiltered grammar is for diagnosis.
• Size: 20 questions is the default. Use 10 to probe one topic. Use 60 when the topic bar is already telling a story and you want a denser sample.
• Timer: off while you are learning a form. Relaxed or exam mode once the form is familiar and you want pressure.
• Feedback: immediate when drilling; review at end when measuring.
• Navigation: free if you flag and return; forward-only if you want exam discipline.

Skip when you do not know. Flag when you guessed or hesitated. The review screen is built around those two states: retry wrong, retry flagged, full retake.

Immediate feedback is tempting for grammar because a conjugation feels like a fact. Use it for drill. For a weekly measure, turn it off so you do not learn the pattern of this paper instead of the structure.

A grammar-first week that does not ignore the other skills

Grammar items can be answered with a rule and still fail in reading, where the same tense is buried in a paragraph. Do not only drill grammar.

1. Diagnostic: 20 grammar items, review at end, your working band.
2. Retry wrong + flagged the next day. Write down the system (e.g. "agreement with preceding direct object"), not the item text.
3. A short vocabulary sitting if misses were lexical ("I picked depuis because I don't actually know il y a").
4. A reading sitting at the same band. Check whether the grammar you just drilled survives a paragraph.
5. One more grammar sitting, same band, 20 or 60.

Writing items in the bank are the fourth skill. Use them after grammar drill if you want production pressure. They will not replace a teacher marking a essay, but they will show whether you can assemble what you recognised in multiple choice.

Topic mastery is the memory, not the badge

Mastery is per topic, complexity 1–5, with a topic master badge at 80%. The badge is optional colour. The bar is the point: it tells you whether "pronouns" is actually moving or whether you keep resetting to 50% because you only sit mixed papers.

Streaks exist (including a 7-day streak). Do not organise your French around a flame icon. Organise it around a short list of structures that failed twice.

AI gap analysis can help once you have a real miss list and an Education entitlement with tokens. It is not a substitute for retrying the items. Feed it a week of errors, not a mood.

Agreement, tense, and mood are three jobs

French learners often treat "grammar" as one pile. A sitting will not. Agreement is a looking-back problem: gender, number, past participle when the object came first. Tense is a looking-around problem: bounded event versus background, habit versus one-off. Mood is a looking-forward problem: does this clause sit under a trigger that wants the subjunctive, or are you inventing a trigger because the sentence "feels important"?

If your retry list is mixed, split it. One day, only agreement misses. Next day, only tense. Mood last, because it is rarer at A2 and noisy if you have not automated the other two. A 20-question unfiltered grammar paper at B1 will usually show which of the three is actually dominant. Trust that distribution more than the story you tell about being "bad at the subjunctive."

When an item looks like vocabulary — you did not know quoique takes subjunctive — it is still a grammar miss for study purposes. Put it on the mood list. When you did not know quoique at all, send it to a vocabulary sitting, then come back. The learn with practice tests loop is built for that hand-off.

Negation and clitics deserve their own line. Ne … que, ne … plus, ne … jamais change meaning, not only "add a pas." Object pronouns before the verb are not optional decoration; they are the sentence. If you keep missing those, stop doing mixed 60-question papers. Filter, sit 10 or 20, retry, then check the same patterns in reading.

A grammar sitting with the timer off is for seeing the form. The same sitting in exam mode is for seeing whether the form is automatic. If exam mode collapses you, you do not automatically need a lower CEFR band. You may need slower drill until the structure is boring, then put the clock back on.

Common traps this format will catch — and some it will not

It will catch: tense choice in a constrained sentence, agreement when the cue is on the page, pronoun placement in a standard pattern, mood after a listed trigger, articles in a closed set of options.

It will not catch: whether you can produce a paragraph under time with no options, whether your spoken grammar matches your written grammar, whether you can hear a liaison, whether you would survive a live oral. Those need other tools.

It also will not clone an official grammar paper from any ministry. We practise a CEFR-shaped bank. We do not sell DELF as a product and we are not that exam.

A subtler trap: translating in your head, then picking the option that matches English word order. French clitic pronouns and negation will punish that every sitting until you stop. When you miss those items, the retry is the lesson. Re-read the French sentence without English in the way.

How this compares with the other language grammar banks

General English, German, and Spanish use the same four-skill, six-level grid, about 576 items each (English about 577). Do not assume a B1 grammar score in Spanish transfers to French. The systems rhyme; the errors do not.

If you study two languages, keep separate bands. The Education hub will not stop you from being honest. It also will not stop you from lying to yourself with a lower French band labelled as "just warming up" while you sit C1 English.

Access and what you are paying for

Grammar sittings are Education. That means Student or Premium Monthly. For Me and Around Me do not include Education. Student is €9.99/month with unlimited Education and no trial. Monthly is €19.99/month with unlimited Education, 2000 tokens, and a 7-day €1.99 trial. GBP and PLN prices exist at the same tiers (see plans). Student CTA: Get Student — €9.99/month.

You do not buy grammar per sitting. You buy the plan that includes the Education catalogue, then you sit General French as often as you want. Tokens meter AI, not the practice paper. Signup grace does not open Education. The Student plan article is the comparison with Around Me at the same price.

Education on My Path explains the hub: Practice shelf first, no invented Exams catalogue of retired qualifications.

Honest limits

About 576 items across four skills and six levels means grammar at one band is a finite set. You will see repeats. Repeats are how you find out whether the correction stuck. If you want an infinite generator of unique sentences, this is the wrong product.

We will not tell you this will get you into a French university or pass an official diploma. Study advice here is practical: pick a band, drill the structures that fail, check them in reading, repeat. University admissions and official certificates have their own rules.

Grammar practice without vocabulary is brittle; vocabulary without grammar is a word list. Alternate. The French practice test overview is the map of the whole sitting if you have been living in the grammar filter too long.

Start with one honest paper

Open Education, choose General French, set Level to the band you can actually finish, filter to grammar if you already know that is the hole, and sit 20 questions with review at the end. Then retry the misses before you touch a new band. If you still need the plan, go to plans — Get Student — €9.99/month — and keep the sitting on one level until the topic bar moves.