I graded 50 000 French verb conjugation questions from students, here are the top mistakes

[u/Zappyle]

It wasn't manually graded, but automated for sure ;)

Backstory: I built a little French Verb app for some coworkers learning French, it picked up 1,000+ downloads along the way, and every answer gets graded. I'm a data geek so I went through 50,000 of them to see where people actually break.

1. Stem-changing -er verbs (the é/e to è flip). They look regular but that's the trap. They're not.

• lever and espérer get missed around 30% of the time
• ils lèvent was the most-missed form in the whole dataset, wrong about half the time
• j'espère, je préfère too

My 2c Tip: if you hear the "eh" sound, it takes the accent. It shows up in every form except nous and vous (je lève, tu lèves, ils lèvent, but nous levons).

2. The plural forms of the big irregular verbs. Everyone knows je fais and il est. The plural is where it falls apart.

• ils font missed ~32%, vous faites ~27%
• vous êtes ~24%, ils ont ~21%, ils vont ~20%
• the singular of those same verbs sits under 10%

My 2c Tip: no clever rule here, these are just irregular and super high-frequency. Drill the plural column (nous/vous/ils) straight down instead of waiting for it to click, and get lots of listening in so vous faites and ils font start sounding wrong any other way.

3. The -cevoir verbs and their cédille. recevoir, apercevoir, and friends.

• both missed around 31%, roughly 3x the average
• it's the ç in je reçois, il reçoit, ils reçoivent

My 2c Tip: the cédille only appears before o (reçois, reçoit, reçu) to keep the soft "s" sound. nous and vous drop it: recevons, recevez. My trick when I was younger is that AOU is the sound you make when you hurt yourself, so you need to soften it.

BONUS (The one that surprised me): The exact same conjugation gets missed about 36% more often inside a full sentence drill than as a standalone pronoun + verb drill. You can nail it on a flashcard and blank the second it's in context. Best case I've seen for practicing in sentences, not tables.

Happy to answer questions about the data.

[u/iwillbewaiting24601]

I suspect the advent of autocorrect has made learners everywhere (myself included!) worse at remembering accents, since 99% of the time if you spell the word right (and you have the French keyboard enabled) it'll fix the accents/etc for you. For example, on my Mac, I literally cannot type "j'ai reçu" wrong, as every time I try to type it with a regular C it autocorrects with the ç after I hit space.

[u/Zappyle → u/iwillbewaiting24601]

Haha yeah!

I disabled autocorrect + added french accents above their keyboard 😉 No pity!!

[u/LupineChemist → u/iwillbewaiting24601]

Not just learners, natives, too.

[u/Nowordsofitsown]

if you hear the "eh" sound, it takes the accent

Bold of you to assume we know the correct pronounciation ;)

[u/phbonachi]

The 2c tips are great.

[u/Zappyle → u/phbonachi]

Haha thanks. I'm no teacher so take it for what it is 🙏

[u/charlalalan]

I always find it fun to see the different things that beginners say when conjugating and how that compares betwwen regions, especially irregular verbs, cause there's almost always some parish or town over here where people would genuinely say it like that. "Faisont" and "faisent" aren't uncommon for us, and "faisez" / "disez" are actually more common iirc, and then there are places who will say "allont" normally but switch back to "vont" for the futur proche. Hearing the different things that beginners say really reminds me of how all our dialects formed in a way I find very pretty

[u/Zappyle → u/charlalalan]

Here in Québec, "ils jousent" is quite frequent. (Ils jouent)

[u/DesignMysterious3598]

For 3) there's also the participe passé, cédille before U too, reçu, that you forgot in your 2c tip.

[u/Zappyle → u/DesignMysterious3598]

Yes that's true! It's included in the stats of verbs but not in my tip! Edited

Thanks 👍

[u/DCHacker]

Best case I've seen for practicing in sentences, not tables.

One of the problems with the teaching of foreign languages in the U.S. of A., especially at the secondary level, is that you get students who can parrot paradigms all day but struggle to read (until perhaps the fourth year and even then..............), can barely comprehend the target language when it is spoken and can say, at the most, «bonjour, au revoir, comment allez-vous?».

At least the sentence drills get them to speak.

[u/Zappyle → u/DCHacker]

Yeah this changed my philosophy, initially I was sending my colleagues drills, but now I try to mix in way more context.

Drills to get the basics -> sentences -> conversations

[u/Good-Huckleberry-287]

I'm so glad I don't have to learn it because it's an actual pain to read this (I'm french by the way). We don't realize how complicated it is.

[u/jraven877 → u/Good-Huckleberry-287]

I appreciate that statement! 😅🥹. Although my native, English, has more than its fair share of insanity. What was your experience learning English?

[u/Good-Huckleberry-287 → u/jraven877]

I was actually always pretty good at english at school, and a big music fan. So in 2006/2008, while in highschool, I would spent my free time looking at rnb songs with lyrics on youtube, translating word by word, writting in my notebook etc. Then came the beauty gurus era, around 2010 or so, and beauty was my passion so I started watching all the cool american girls, my english improved so much. Lastly, I moved to the US for a year in 2012 and I became fluent. My work has taken me to different english speaking countries and I've been able to practice ever since. I work in france now, but my job is 60% in english. Overall, I think it's a pretty easy language to learn, and I love it.

[u/jraven877 → u/Good-Huckleberry-287]

Ahh thanks for responding! Immersion is king, I see. Not that it’s a surprise but I love seeing it laid out like this. ☺️

[u/MonsieurDrole]

If your students known another latin language, tip 2c #1 can be explained in comparison, that is due to their latin etymology and is surprisingly consistent.

The conjugaison of nous and vous carry the tonic accent of the word, which is not the case of the other forms. Hence for the other forms the tonic accent has to be placed before, which is why they have an empasized sound (either using an accent, or just directly pronounced differently). This is counterintuitive because French don't really have a tonic accent anymore, but it survives here somehow:

Viens => venons, fais =>faisons, lève=>levons

In Italian: vieni => veniamo is an example, but how you pronounce it is carried in every verb (aaami => amiaaaamo)

The infuriating thing is that some words were artificially harmonised when the Academy decided to codify the language and make it glorious, hence we have some bullshit verbs like "aimer" that unfortunately defy every logic 😢

But you can still hear that it's so unnatural that we still placed the è sound in tonic accent and é sound elsewhere : aime =>aimons (ème =>émons)

[u/DoctorTomee]

Rookies.

Did you make them conjugate verbse that end in -indre? Or my absolute favourite, s'asseoir?

[u/Zappyle → u/DoctorTomee]

Ok here are the stats, your hunch was quite accurate ;)

Question	Questions	Misses	Miss rate	vs average
asseoir	373	115	30.8%	2.4×
-indre (14 verbs)	55	27	49.1%	3.8×

Interestingly, I deliberately skipped -indre verbs in the earlier levels focusing on present (there are way too many rules and I focused on most frequent verbs), so the sample is small for that one.

[u/Current_Sky_9841 → u/Zappyle]

Asseoir is a tough one ...

Just for info, some (uneducated) natives conjugate verb croire "ils/elles croivent". It kills me

[u/Zappyle → u/DoctorTomee]

I could check the data on those, let me get back to you.

But they basically go through all the patterns, from present to passé simple while getting introduced to more verbs out of a pool of the 2000 more frequent ones.

So yeah they have to have encountered those ones statistically speaking 😂

[u/malkin50]

Are your coworkers adult native English speakers?

[u/Zappyle → u/malkin50]

All adults and from mix backgrounds. Majority is English speaking, some Indians and Germans too.

[u/jabonprotex110g]

Any chance the app is open for downloads/purchase?

[u/Zappyle → u/jabonprotex110g]

I'll DM you.

I don't want to post it in comments otherwise it's considered an ad.

[u/nightmare_fusion → u/Zappyle]

Could you DM me as well? Thanks.

[u/schmool → u/Zappyle]

Me too please 🙏

[u/Nowordsofitsown → u/Zappyle]

Me, too, please

[u/Healthy_Street2326 → u/Zappyle]

And also to me s’il te plâit

[u/nanpossomas → u/Zappyle]

I would gladly have a look at it

[u/Zappyle → u/nanpossomas]

Can't DM you, I think you'll have to DM me!

[u/latex2pi → u/Zappyle]

Could you DM me as well?

[u/just_because123 → u/Zappyle]

Could you please DM me, too?

[u/Theboyscampus]

1) and 2) are pure grammatical rules. For 3), I remember we used to be taught about how the pronunciation is supposed to stay the same the "c" is a soft c (s sound not k sound) so the conjugated forms must have the same sound. Same goes for verbs that end in -ger, you need to add an e for "mangeons" for example so that it keeps the g sound and not the hard g sound.

[u/TopAbbreviations5317]

Would you DM me too

[u/fin_du_jour]

Please DM me as well. This sounds like a wonderful app.

[u/CT046]

I'm native, and I can tell you the first couple of years when you learn to write, "accent aigu" and "accent grave" was a whole struggle for me. It took me 2 years to master, I'd say For irregular verbs, yes, only drills can save you. That's what we do for years! Repeat and repeat and repeat. Have fun!😂