Day One French | Beginner News-Focused French Course
Day One French is a 20-episode beginner podcast for French learners with no prior experience. It focuses on slow, clear news stories to teach essential vocabulary and grammar. Each five-minute lesson helps build listening skills for the main LinguaWire A1 French News feed. The course uses AI support with native-speaker oversight.
Episodes
Episode 2 — The prime minister has two children and lives in the capital
Episode two of Day One French, with Louis and Claire. Today you learn the verb avoir (to have), the apostrophe that welds j'ai into a single sound, the family words, and yesterday's promised secret: French people don't say how old they are, they say how many years they have. J'ai trente ans, I have thirty years. Today's real news sentence: La Première ministre a deux enfants et habite dans la capi
Episode 3 — The government, the police and the army are on the streets
Episode three of Day One French, with Louis and Claire. The day every French learner remembers: the words for 'the'. You'll meet le, la and les, plus l', the apostrophe French uses to smash words together, complete the verb être, learn the word aujourd'hui, and discover why the moustache is feminine. Today's sentence: Le gouvernement, la police et l'armée sont aujourd'hui dans les rues.▶ Practice
Episode 4 — More than ten thousand people are at the demonstration
Episode four of Day One French, with Louis and Claire. News is obsessed with counting, today you unlock the big numbers: cent, mille, dix mille. And you meet the most gloriously mad thing in the French language: there is no word for eighty. The French say quatre-vingts, four twenties, and seventy is soixante-dix, sixty-ten. Plus the two words for people and the crowd vocabulary of every protest st
Episode 5 — The doctors and the teachers are on strike today
Episode five of Day One French, with Louis and Claire, the week-one finale. Today: fifteen professions, the silent plural (ten doctors sound exactly like one, the article does all the work), the most French phrase in all of news, and your first full regular verb: travailler. Today's sentence: Les médecins et les professeurs sont en grève aujourd'hui.▶ Practice this episode free, lesson sheet + 10-
Episode 6 — The election is on Sunday and the polls are very close
Episode six of Day One French, with Louis and Claire. Week two begins: one news domain a day, starting with the biggest, politics. Today: the election, the word-family trick (learn one root, unlock the whole family), the polls, and the day French refuses to say 'on'. Today's sentence: L'élection est dimanche et les sondages sont très serrés.▶ Practice this episode free, lesson sheet + 10-minute ho
Episode 7 — It is forty degrees in the south and there is no rain
Episode seven of Day One French, with Louis and Claire. Every news broadcast on earth ends the same way, the weather. Today: it is forty degrees (French says 'it makes forty degrees'!), hot and cold, the four compass directions, and il y a, the three tiny words that mean 'there is' and unlock a thousand sentences. Today's sentence: Il fait quarante degrés dans le sud et il n'y a pas de pluie.▶ Pra
Episode 8 — The trains are full and the airport is closed
Episode eight of Day One French, with Louis and Claire. Transport chaos is a news perennial, today you learn the trains, the station, the airport, open and closed, plus a name-check for the TGV. And the loveliest sound-trick in French: the liaison, when a silent letter suddenly wakes up to link two words. Today's sentence: Les trains sont pleins et l'aéroport est fermé.▶ Practice this episode free
Episode 9 — Prices are high and people have less money
Episode nine of Day One French, with Louis and Claire. The story that never leaves the front page: the cost of living. Today: prices, money, more and less, expensive and its very French opposite, the verb coûter, and the delightful fact that l'argent, the French word for money, literally means silver. Today's sentence: Les prix sont élevés et les gens ont moins d'argent.▶ Practice this episode fre
Episode 10 — The French national team plays tonight in front of 80,000 fans
Episode ten of Day One French, with Louis and Claire, you're halfway! Sport closes every bulletin: today you learn l'équipe de France, Les Bleus, to play, to win, to lose, the match and the goal, and quatre-vingt mille, the four-twenties number that terrified you in episode four, now casually decoded. Today's sentence: L'équipe de France joue ce soir devant quatre-vingt mille supporters.▶ Practice
Episode 11 — The minister says: bread and milk are more expensive this year
Episode eleven of Day One French, with Louis and Claire. Week three is the verb week, and it opens with the single most-used verb in French news: dire, to say. Plus the news colon, the breakfast table, bread, milk, water, coffee, eating and drinking, your first comparison with plus cher, and a one-line love letter to the baguette. Today's sentence: Le ministre dit : le pain et le lait sont plus ch
Episode 12 — Thousands of people are coming to France for the festival
Episode twelve of Day One French, with Louis and Claire. People moving, to festivals, to borders, to safety, is half the news. Today: venir and aller, the map of the world, nationalities, des milliers de, and the quirk that French countries have genders, which is why you say en France, au Canada, aux États-Unis. Today's sentence: Des milliers de personnes viennent en France pour le festival.▶ Prac
Episode 13 — The summit begins on Monday and ends on Friday
Episode thirteen of Day One French, with Louis and Claire. Every news story is pinned to a date. Today: the seven days of the week, Monday is the moon's day, Tuesday belongs to Mars, plus the verbs that start and finish every event in the news, and the four diary phrases that place any story in time. Today's sentence: Le sommet commence lundi et se termine vendredi.▶ Practice this episode free, le
Episode 14 — In the north there is no electricity and the schools are not open
Episode fourteen of Day One French, with Louis and Claire. Bad news is news, and bad news is full of negatives. Today's quirk is the most French piece of grammar so far: the negation sandwich, one little word before the verb, one after, plus the great collapse that turns any noun into no-noun. And the fixed phrase you've been saying since weather day finally gets decoded. Today's sentence: Dans le
Episode 15 — Who is the new minister and what does she want?
Episode fifteen of Day One French, with Louis and Claire, the week-three finale. News exists to answer questions, so today you get the question kit: qui, que, où, quand, pourquoi, comment, plus vouloir, the verb of wanting, and the three ways French asks any question: raise your voice, bolt on est-ce que, or flip the verb like a newsreader. Today's sentence: Qui est la nouvelle ministre et que veu
Episode 16 — The president said yesterday: the war is over
Episode sixteen of Day One French, with Louis and Claire. Final week. News is mostly about things that already happened, so today you learn to recognise the French past: avoir plus a past participle. He HAS declared, she HAS said, one pattern moves your whole vocabulary into yesterday. Plus war and peace, the vocabulary of the biggest stories. Today's sentence: Le président a déclaré hier : la gue
Episode 17 — An earthquake hit the region in the night
Episode seventeen of Day One French, with Louis and Claire. A milestone: your first full two-sentence news story, exactly as breaking news is written. Today: the earthquake, un tremblement de terre, an earth-trembling, drama built from plain words, plus the past tense going plural: one earthquake hit, many people have lost. Today's story: Un tremblement de terre a frappé la région dans la nuit. Be
Episode 18 — The company is going to build a new factory and create 3,000 jobs
Episode eighteen of Day One French, with Louis and Claire. Yesterday the past, today the future, and in French the future is just going: aller plus a verb in its dictionary form. Plus the business kit (the company, the factory, jobs, to build, to create) and the going-verb's double life: with a place it's motion, with a verb it's the future. Today's sentence: L'entreprise va construire une nouvell
Episode 19 — The prime minister in Washington
Episode nineteen of Day One French, with Louis and Claire, the penultimate episode. Headlines don't speak full French; they speak telegram: the verb deleted, the heavy words left standing. Today you learn to expand them back into sentences you already know, drill three real headlines built entirely from series vocabulary, and pick up the diplomacy kit. Tomorrow: graduation, a full French news bull
Episode 20 — Graduation: your first French news bulletin
The Day One French finale, with Louis and Claire. Graduation day: a full French news bulletin, election, heatwave, strike, sport, built entirely from the last twenty days, read twice like real radio. Then the handover: you're ready for LinguaWire A1 Daily French News, a new episode every day, real news stories in slow, clear A1 French. Subscribe via the link in the show notes and your first real d
Episode 1 — The new president is 62 years old
Day One French takes you from absolute zero to listening to news in simple French — including our A1 news podcast, LinguaWire A1 Daily French News — in four weeks. Twenty episodes, five minutes a day, with Louis and Claire. In episode one you learn the verb être (I am, he is, she is), the word le président, the official news formula for saying someone's age — and the first great French quirk: the
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