French Vocabulary Practice from A1 to C2

French vocabulary is not a single list you finish. A1 needs a small, high-frequency core you can actually spell and recognise. C2 needs precise collocations, register, and words you may never say aloud but must not misread. Practice that ignores CEFR will either bore you with bonjour or drown you in low-frequency items you cannot attach to a structure.

My Path's General French bank treats vocabulary as one of four written skills, A1 through C2, inside about 576 items for the language. You work at one CEFR band per sitting. No listening, no speaking: this is written lexical control. For the full sitting, see the French practice test. You will need grammar and reading in the same week or the words will not stick in sentences. The study loop is in learn French with practice tests.

What a vocabulary item is for

A good vocabulary item asks whether you control a word in a constraint: the right preposition, the right false-friend, the right member of a set (savoir / connaître, attendre / s'attendre à). A bad vocabulary quiz asks you to match chien to a picture forever.

On My Path you get a closed bank, a score, skips, flags, retries, and per-topic mastery. That is enough to see which fields are thin (work, time, argument, food, abstraction) and which "vocab problems" are actually grammar wearing a lexical mask.

This is practice against a CEFR-shaped bank. It is not an official wordlist from a ministry, not a spaced-repetition app with 20,000 cards, and not DELF. My Path is not affiliated with France Éducation international. If you need a diploma, sit that exam. If you need to know whether your written lexicon matches the band on your CV, sit this.

Vocabulary by band

A1. Survival sets: identity, numbers, time-of-day, food, immediate environment, the verbs you cannot function without. Practice should make recognition automatic. If A1 items still feel like puzzles, do not decorate your plan with B1 lists.

A2. Everyday life with more verbs and more function words. You can talk about past and future in simple ways only if the lexical glue is there (déjà, encore, jamais, depuis). A2 vocabulary misses often look like grammar misses.

B1. Work, study, travel, opinions. You need words for cause, contrast, and preference, not only objects. B1 is where people who "got by on holiday" discover they cannot read a workplace email.

B2. Independent range: news, argument, nuance of attitude. Quantity of words matters less than whether you can choose among near-synonyms. B2 vocab practice is discrimination, not collection.

C1. Precision and low-frequency items in serious texts. You should not be learning maison. You should be losing items on hedging, formal verbs, and domain language.

C2. Residual gaps and fine sense distinctions. A C2 vocabulary sitting is a check, not a beginner course with a prestigious label.

Pick one band. Mixed CEFR pools are refused; several ticks still roll one level. Language tests call the axis Level. The measurement argument is the same as why bands matter in practice.

Frequency, themes, and the false comfort of lists

Frequency lists are a reasonable way to start A1–A2. They are a poor way to finish B2. The words that fail at B2 are often mid-frequency items in the wrong collocation, or words you "know" in isolation and cannot use in a sentence.

Topic filters on the Education Practice card are a closed vocabulary — real filters, not a cosmetic dropdown. Use them when a theme keeps failing. If a puzzle-like item has no clean theme, other products on the hub may show Mixed Problems; for languages, stay on named skills and topics. Do not filter so narrowly that you only ever see one semantic field. Transfer is the point of a language.

A personal list in a notebook still helps. After each sitting, copy the misses that were truly lexical. Do not copy the ones that were tense or agreement — send those to a grammar sitting. Mixing both in one notebook is how "vocab review" becomes an unreadable pile.

How to sit vocabulary on My Path

Open Education. General French is on the Practice shelf with the other live languages and maths practice.

• Level: one of A1–C2.
• Size: 20 default. Ten for a single field. Sixty when you want a denser lexical sample at a stable band.
• Timer: off while you are still translating every option. Add a timer when recognition should be fast.
• Feedback: immediate for drill; review at end for a measure.
• Navigation: free if you flag and return; forward-only for discipline.
• Skip / flag: skip unknown items. Flag hesitations. Guessing right words is how people inflate a vocabulary score and then fail the reading paper.

After the sitting: retry wrong, retry flagged, or retake. Mastery is per topic with complexity 1–5; topic master is 80%. Badges (first lesson, perfect score, streaks, polyglot) exist and should stay in the background. The topic bar is the artefact.

AI gap analysis needs an Education entitlement and tokens. Use it when you have a cluster of misses, not a single unknown noun.

Words that only exist in sentences

If you only sit vocabulary, you will overfit to the item format. Alternate:

1. Vocabulary sitting, working band, 20 items, review at end.
2. Retry misses the next day.
3. Reading at the same band — did those words appear, and did you recognise them in a paragraph?
4. Grammar if the "unknown word" was a form of a word you actually know (vu vs voir, aille vs aller).
5. Writing items in the bank when you want production. Multiple-choice recognition is not recall. Production will feel worse. That feeling is information.

A week that is only vocabulary flashcards — even our items — is a week of recognition. French you can read in a list and not in a text is not yet vocabulary you own.

Function words do more work than nouns

Learners collect nouns. French items at A2–B1 often fail on function words: depuis / pendant / il y a, pour versus pendant with time, y / en, dont, celui-ci. Those are vocabulary in the sense that you must know them, and grammar in the sense that they change clause shape. If your notebook is full of boulangerie and empty of cependant, you will keep failing reading for "no reason."

After each vocabulary sitting, mark misses as content (a thing, a verb you can picture) or function (a word that glues the sentence). Spend the next sitting's filter, if you have one, on the function pile. Content words you can also pick up from authentic reading. Function words you will not notice until an item forces a choice.

Connectors belong here too. Pourtant, or, en effet, ainsi are not decoration. They are the difference between following a B1 paragraph and only following the nouns. If reading sittings fail on "the writer's point," check whether you actually have the connector inventory for that band before you declare a reading disability.

Gender and verbs as lexical facts

Gender is vocabulary. Hoping to "feel" it at B2 is how people still guess le / la on common nouns. When you miss gender, add the article to the notebook (la fois, not fois). Do not add a colour-coded system you will not maintain. Article plus noun is enough.

Verbs are worse: one infinitive hides a family of forms. A vocabulary miss on s'attendre à is not the same as a grammar miss on nous nous attendions. Send the first to vocab retry, the second to grammar. If you dump both into one deck labelled "French," you will review without knowing which skill moved.

Prepositional verbs (penser à / de, jouer à / de) belong on the vocab list until they are automatic, then they belong in grammar only when the item is really about structure. Be honest about which sitting failed.

If you sit with a native speaker, do not use that as evidence you can skip B1 vocabulary items. Speech hides gender and many function words. The written sitting will still find them. That is not the sitting being picky. That is writing.

A two-week vocabulary plan

Week 1: two 20-question vocabulary sittings at the working band, review at end, retries the following day. One reading sitting. Notebook of function-word misses only — not every noun you vaguely recognised.

Week 2: one filtered sitting if a theme is obvious; one unfiltered sitting; one grammar sitting if forms of known verbs keep appearing as "unknown words." Then a 20-question reading check at the same CEFR level.

Do not add a third vocabulary app in week 2. The constraint is the point. About 576 items in the whole French bank means vocabulary at one band is small enough to actually finish cycling. Cycling beats collecting.

When you are bored of A2 vocabulary, that is the signal to check A2 reading and grammar, not to jump to C1 word lists. Boredom at the right band is fluency starting. Boredom at the wrong band is avoidance. The learn with practice tests article is the full loop if you keep skipping the reading check.

Cognates, false friends, and English in the way

English speakers get a free lift from cognates and a hidden tax from false friends (actuellement, librairie, sensible, expérience). Vocabulary items at B1–C1 will keep hitting that tax. When you miss one, write the French word and a short English disambiguation, not a one-word translation. "Actuellement = currently, not actually" is a usable note. "Actuellement = actually" is how you miss it again.

Do not use English word order as a hint for prepositions. Dépendre de, rêver de, jouer à / de will not match your first translation. Treat preposition choice as vocabulary, then confirm in grammar sittings if the item is really a structure.

Finite bank, honest repeats

About 576 items across four skills and six levels is a serious practice set, not an infinite corpus. You will see vocabulary items again. That is a feature if you treat the repeat as a delayed test: did last week's correction hold? It is a limitation if you wanted a unique newspaper every morning. Read real French for volume. Use this bank for measurement and targeted drill.

We will not claim a number more precise than "about 576." Item counts move as the bank is signed off. The grid does not: four skills × six CEFR levels, one band per sitting.

Other languages on the same grid

General English (~577 items), German, and Spanish (~576 each) share the shape. Shared Latinate roots between French, English, and Spanish can trick you into a higher French band than you can grammar. Keep French Level independent. Education on My Path maps the whole Practice shelf.

Who pays for this

Vocabulary sittings are Education. Student (€9.99/month, unlimited Education, no trial) and Premium Monthly (€19.99/month, unlimited Education, 2000 tokens, 7-day trial at €1.99) include them. For Me and Around Me do not. GBP and PLN mirror the tiers. Student CTA: Get Student — €9.99/month. Compare on plans and Student plan.

You do not buy a vocab pack. You subscribe to Education and sit General French. Tokens meter AI features. Signup grace does not unlock the bank.

A placement rule that saves months

If you cannot decide between two bands, sit the lower one for vocabulary first. A 90% at A2 with a short miss list is a platform for A2 reading and grammar. A 40% at B2 is a fog. After two clean A2 vocabulary sittings and a reading check, move up. If B1 vocabulary is fine and B1 reading fails, the hole is not "more words" in the abstract — it is words in texts, which is a reading problem.

C2 vocabulary as a motivational label is a common way to waste a sitting. The band is there for people who are already operating at that control, not as a gift to your self-image.

Start with the words you actually miss

Go to Education, choose General French, pick one CEFR Level, sit 20 vocabulary items with review at the end, and retry the misses before you download another list from the internet. If you need the entitlement, open plans. Get Student — €9.99/month — if unlimited Education is the point. Then keep the band still until the topic bar moves.