French Mistakes and DifficultiesImprove your French by looking out for and learning how to avoid some common French mistakes.
Direct objects and indirect objects can be tricky to understand and use, but it's essential to know the difference in order to speak and write French correctly. Here are some tips to help you figure out which type of object you're dealing with. B2 - Upper-Intermediate French • prepositions • pronouns
In English, two negatives are said to make a positive: that is, they cancel one another out, and this is grammatically unacceptable. In French, however, négation double is alive and well. Two negatives sometimes make a positive, while other times they combine to make the negation stronger or more specific. 
Sometimes one pronoun just isn't enough. A sentence might need both a direct and indirect object, or a reflexive pronoun as well as an adverbial. When this happens, word order becomes an issue: how do you know which pronoun to place first? It's actually pretty easy, once you learn the rules. B1 - Intermediate French • pronouns • word order
In many words the letter e is potentially silent, a characteristic which has three French names: e caduc, e instable, and e muet. Though e muet is the most common term, e instable is the most accurate.
C1 - Advanced French • formalities • informalities
A transference error is a certain type of mistake, common to foreign language learners, which can be particularly difficult to stop making. The hardest part is becoming aware of the error; once you’ve done that, it’s just a matter of figuring out the correction and practicing your way to perfection. 
It consists of just two letters, yet the French word en has three distinct areas of meaning/usage and four different pronunciations. Here's everything you need to know about en. B2 - Upper-Intermediate French • French Abbreviations - Acronyms - Apocopes • prepositions • pronouns
What's the difference between encore and toujours? They're both adverbs of frequency with similar but not interchangeable meanings - at least most of the time. 
The third person plural verb ending -ent is often not pronounced. The rules for when and how to pronounce it are fairly straightforward: it has to do with two completely different issues. 
French grammar is sometimes trumped by pronunciation, as in the case of euphonic adjectives. Because French does not like the hiatus created when a word ending with a vowel precedes a word that begins with a vowel or mute h, a few adjectives change their spelling—and thus their pronunciation—for purely euphonic reasons. A2 - Low-Intermediate French • adjectives • spelling
It's no accident that spoken French is beautiful - there are actually grammatical changes required to avoid hiatus in order to maintain euphony, so that words flow together like music. 
Faillir has no direct verbal English equivalent when used as a semi-auxiliary verb; English needs an adverb or a short phrase to capture the meaning, such as "to almost do." B1 - Intermediate French • verbs
The causative is a grammatical construction with a lazy subject who, rather than performing some action himself, is making someone or something else do it: to make something happen, to have something done. B1 - Intermediate French • verbs
No matter how motivated and self-reliant you are, you can't learn French entirely on your own. For those times when you just can't figure out a particularly tricky French phrase or grammatical construction, here are some places to get help. 
While most French nouns are either masculine or feminine, some have different meanings depending on their gender. These "gender homonyms" are pronounced the same, so it's particularly important to pay attention to the article or other determiner that signals the gender and therefore meaning.
Practice is the key to improving your French, and just 15 minutes a day on some kind of French activity can make a huge difference. Check out these ideas and draw up your own schedule.
Of the four language skills, many people find that speaking is the most difficult. Here are tips and resources to help you overcome these obstacles in order to practice French as much as you like.
Jouer is a regular -er French verb that can be a bit confusing when it comes time to decide which preposition should follow. Here's everything you need to know.
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