How long does it really take to reach B2 in French?

I get this question almost every week, usually in the first lesson.

"How long until I reach B2?"

Since January 2026 it carries more weight than before. B2 is now the level required for French citizenship, in speaking and in writing, and a diploma is needed to prove it.

So people would like a date. I would rather give you a rhythm, and the good news that comes with it: most of what takes you to B2 can fit inside the week you already live.

Two people, the same starting point, two rhythms

Both are at A2, both work full time in Toulouse, both would like to reach B2.

The first takes two or three lessons a week and does a little French in between, regularly. For her, around six months can be enough.

The second takes one lesson a week and rarely finds a moment at home. The same journey takes her closer to a year and a half.

The difference has very little to do with talent, and I want to be clear about that, because the second student often concludes that the problem is her. It is the shape of a week, and a week can be reshaped.

The journey, counted in months

Teachers usually count this journey in hours: somewhere around 380 to 450 of them between A2 and B2, all sources of French included. Hours are hard to picture, so here is the same thing in months, lessons and personal work counted together.

These are orders of magnitude rather than promises. People vary, and so do weeks.

Fifteen hours sounds enormous until you see how it is built, and your lessons are a small part of it. The rest is French you put into things you were going to do anyway.

Why time in France does not always do the work on its own

There is a sentence I often hear, usually said more quietly: "I have been living in France for three years and I still cannot speak."

Three years in France means thousands of hours of French around you: shops, colleagues, the radio in the car, the neighbour who talks too fast. On paper, far more than you need. Most of it passes by, because hearing a language and learning it work in slightly different ways.

My students often tell me, proudly: "I watch series in French with subtitles." Good, honestly. Then I ask what they took away from the last episode, and there is usually a silence.

Everyone does this, and it makes sense. The advice we all hear is simple: surround yourself with French. It is good advice, it just stops halfway. The second half is taking one thing out of that French and putting it somewhere you will meet it again. One word, one phrase, one way of saying something you had never thought of. Written down, reviewed, then used out loud, imperfectly, until it becomes yours.

That second half is what turns your week into progress. Your commute, your groceries, the ten minutes of small talk before a meeting: left passive they add a little, worked actively they count.

One of my students put it well:

"I like the way lessons are built around real situations. It helps me handle daily life in France and follow ordinary conversations." Saurav, Aerostructure Stress Engineer, Ascendance Flight Technologies

What changed for him was not the amount of French around him. It was having French he could use.

What a six month week looks like

The biggest line is your ordinary life, which you were going to live anyway.

For the vocabulary line, my students use Anki, a flashcard app that shows you a word again just before you forget it. Ten minutes every day does more than an hour on Sunday. Here is the way I set it up, how I use Anki to learn vocabulary without forgetting it, in French for now.

A week built mainly on lessons and passive listening adds up to far fewer usable hours, and that gap explains six months against a year and a half better than any difference in ability. It is a question of method, and method can be adjusted in a single lesson.

How to know where you are

Start with an order of magnitude, and it is free. There is a simulator on this site: about twenty questions, five minutes, and it gives you an estimated level and the distance left to cover. Test your level. Take it for what it is, an estimate rather than a diploma.

Then two questions tell you whether B2 is close.

Can you argue? B2 is where you stop describing and start defending a position. Not only "the meeting was long and difficult", but "I disagree with this approach, here is why, and here is what I would suggest instead". If you can hold that in French, under mild pressure, without rehearsing it, you are close.

Can you write it? Speaking often improves faster in France, because daily life asks for it. Writing moves more slowly, because little asks for it, and the citizenship requirement asks for B2 in both. If writing is your weaker side, that is genuinely good news: it is the most trainable part of the whole journey, and the part where working with a teacher makes the biggest difference.

Where this leaves you

You do not need to find 400 hours somewhere. They are already there, spread through a week you are already living. What turns them into months of progress: regular lessons that work on what is actually blocking you, the habit of taking one thing out of every French thing you touch, and someone who will tell you clearly, without making you feel bad about it, when an activity is not doing much for you.

Wherever you are starting from, the next six months can look very different from the last three years.

Tell me where you are today, and we will look together at what your next months could look like. Write to me at contact@dis-moi.co, or book a call, and we will start from your week as it is.

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For the naturalisation procedure itself, see service-public.fr. This article is only about the language.

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