Why You Understand French but Can’t Speak It (and How to Fix It)

You can follow French YouTube videos (at least the gist). You understand your tutor. You can read a short article and feel proud because you’re getting it.

Then someone asks a simple question like “Alors, tu fais quoi ce week-end ?” and your brain goes:

buffering… buffering… error…

You know French—so why can’t you speak it?

This situation is so common it’s practically a rite of passage. And the good news is: it usually means your French is developing normally. The “I understand but I can’t speak” phase is often the point where comprehension is racing ahead… and speaking hasn’t been trained to keep up.

Let’s look at what’s really happening under the hood—and the exact practices that turn understanding into effortless speech.

The Real Reason: Comprehension Is Recognition, Speaking Is Retrieval

Understanding French is mainly a recognition task. Your brain hears “Je suis en retard” and recognizes the pattern and meaning. Even if you don’t catch every word, you can still infer a lot from context.

Speaking is a retrieval + assembly task:

retrieve words from memory
choose a structure
conjugate (even if you don’t “think grammar”)
pronounce it clearly
do it quickly
do it while managing social pressure

That’s a lot.

So when you understand French but can’t speak it, it doesn’t mean you’re “bad at languages.” It means you’ve trained recognition more than retrieval. Like watching tennis for months and then wondering why your serve isn’t good yet.

Your Brain Has Two Vocabularies: Passive vs Active

Most learners build a massive passive vocabulary (words they recognize) long before they build an active vocabulary (words they can use on demand).

For example, you might recognize:

cependant (however)
d’ailleurs (by the way)
pourtant (yet)
rassurant (reassuring)

But when you speak, you reach for:

mais (but)
euh… (uh…)
silence

That gap is normal. The fix isn’t “learn more words.” The fix is training the words you already know to become available under pressure.

Think of it like a toolbox: comprehension tells you what tools exist; speaking is being able to grab the right one instantly.

You’re Trying to Create French From English (and It’s Too Slow)

If your internal process looks like this:

Think in English
Translate the words
Translate the structure
Check grammar
Speak

…then speaking will always feel like pushing a heavy cart uphill.

Real conversation moves fast. Native speakers don’t wait while you assemble a sentence like IKEA furniture.

The way out is to stop building French sentence-by-sentence and start building with ready-made French building blocks: chunks, frames, and patterns you’ve heard a thousand times.

When speech becomes chunk-based, you skip steps 2–4 and go straight from meaning to French.

You Don’t Have Enough “Automatic Phrases” (the Secret of Fluent-Sounding People)

A lot of “fluency” is not vocabulary size. It’s automation.

Fluent speakers rely on pre-packaged sequences like:

Je pense que…
Je ne suis pas sûr…
En fait…
Du coup…
Ça dépend…
J’ai l’impression que…

If you don’t have many of these stored and practiced, your brain has to invent every sentence from scratch. That’s exhausting, and it makes you freeze.

Here’s the key insight: Speaking feels hard when your sentences are original. Speaking feels easy when your sentences are familiar.

So your job is to make French familiar through repetition and reuse—not to “think harder.”

Your Speaking System Might Be Underfed: You Get Input, But Not Output Reps

Many learners do a lot of:

listening
reading
watching videos
studying

All of that builds comprehension.

But speaking requires output repetitions:

answering questions out loud
forming sentences under time pressure
repairing mistakes and continuing
using the same structures again and again until they’re automatic

If you don’t do these reps, your speaking system stays “weak” even while your comprehension becomes impressive.

This is why learners can understand a lot but still struggle to say basic things smoothly.

Fear and Self-Censorship: Your Inner Editor Is Too Loud

Even if you know the words, your brain may block you because it wants to avoid mistakes.

You start a sentence and your inner editor jumps in:

“Is it de or à?”
“Is that masculine?”
“Wait, subjunctive?”
“This sounds wrong.”

So you stop. You restart. You simplify. Or you switch to English.

That’s not a language problem—it’s a performance problem. And it’s incredibly common.

The solution is not “be more confident” as a personality trait. It’s creating speaking situations where mistakes are safe and expected, so your brain stops treating French like a test.

Pronunciation Bottlenecks Can Block Speech Even When You Understand

French can be hard to pronounce quickly:

liaisons (vous avez → sounds like “vou-zavé”)
word linking (je suis allé becomes a smooth stream)
nasal vowels (un, on, an)
the French “r”
silent letters

Your comprehension system can decode sounds without being able to reproduce them comfortably. When your mouth isn’t trained, speaking feels like driving a manual car for the first time: you can do it, but everything is conscious and slow.

A sneaky symptom: you freeze not because you don’t know what to say, but because you don’t feel sure you can say it out loud.

Another Hidden Cause: You Understand “Clean French” but Not Conversational French

You may understand French from:

slow podcasts
teachers speaking clearly
subtitles
written text

But your speaking life might involve:

interruptions
fast replies
slang
casual phrasing
pressure

That mismatch can make you feel like your speaking is “behind,” when really the environment is harder.

Spoken French often uses different defaults than textbook French:

dropping ne (je sais pas)
using fillers (genre, bah, en mode)
using shortcuts (y a, j’suis, t’as)

If your listening content is very “formal,” you may not have enough conversational patterns ready to use.

How to Fix It: Turn Comprehension Into Speaking in 4 Stages

The goal isn’t to force yourself into painful full conversations right away. The goal is to build your speaking ability step-by-step so your brain stops freezing.

Stage 1: Build a “Speaking Core” (the 30 most useful frames)

Pick a set of sentence starters you can use daily. Examples:

Je suis en train de… (I’m in the middle of…)
J’ai envie de… (I feel like…)
J’ai besoin de… (I need…)
Je veux / je peux / je dois… (I want/can/must…)
Je pense que… (I think that…)
Je crois que… (I believe that…)
Je ne sais pas si… (I don’t know if…)
Ça dépend. (It depends.)
En général… (In general…)
En ce moment… (Right now…)

Practice using these frames with simple endings. This builds speed and confidence fast because you’re not inventing the whole sentence.

Stage 2: Train Retrieval With Micro-Speaking (2–5 minutes daily)

Do tiny speaking exercises that force recall, not perfection.

Try one of these each day:

A) The 60-second diary Talk about your day in simple French. Don’t stop; if you get stuck, rephrase.

B) The “3 sentences” rule Pick one topic and say 3 sentences:

what it is
why you like/don’t like it
one detail/example

C) Question drills Answer simple questions out loud:

Qu’est-ce que tu aimes manger ?
Tu préfères la mer ou la montagne ? Pourquoi ?
Qu’est-ce que tu fais demain ?

You’re training your brain to produce on command.

Stage 3: Use Shadowing to Make Speech Automatic

Shadowing is repeating after audio, matching rhythm and linking. It helps because it:

reduces pronunciation anxiety
builds native-like timing
gives you ready-made sentences
trains your mouth to move in French

How to do it (quick version):

choose 30–45 seconds of easy audio you mostly understand
listen once
replay and speak along (even if imperfect)
repeat the same clip daily for a week

This is one of the fastest ways to remove the “French feels stuck in my head” feeling.

Stage 4: Guided Conversations (Not Random Conversation)

If you jump into totally open conversation, you’ll often freeze. Instead, use guided conversation where topics repeat.

Examples:

weekly “my weekend” conversation
describing your work routine every week
retelling the same story with slight variations
roleplays: ordering food, complaining politely, making plans

Repetition is your ally. Each time you repeat a topic, your speech becomes smoother and more automatic.

Quick Fixes for the Most Common Speaking Blocks

If you freeze mid-sentence…

Use stalling phrases (they’re normal in French):

Attends… (Wait…)
Comment dire… (How do you say…)
Je cherche mes mots… (I’m looking for my words…)
Alors… (So…)

These keep you in French and buy time without panicking.

If you always forget words you “know”…

Make mini sentence sets for them. For a word you recognize but never use, create 5 simple sentences and say them out loud for 3 days.

Example: pourtant

Pourtant, c’est vrai.
Pourtant, je suis d’accord.
Je veux venir. Pourtant, je suis fatigué.

This converts passive → active.

If you worry about grammar too much…

Give yourself one rule: Communicate first, correct later. Your brain learns faster when it’s moving.

What Progress Looks Like (So You Don’t Think It’s Not Working)

You won’t suddenly wake up fluent. You’ll notice smaller wins:

you hesitate less on familiar topics
you can rephrase instead of freezing
basic sentences come out faster
you stop translating as much
your “default phrases” grow
you can talk for longer without exhaustion

That’s the speaking system getting trained.

The Bottom Line

Understanding French means you’ve built a strong foundation. Speaking requires a different kind of training: retrieval, chunks, pronunciation automation, and low-pressure output reps.

You don’t need more grammar overload. You need:

daily micro-speaking
repeated sentence frames
shadowing
guided conversations with repetition

French isn’t missing from your brain. It’s just not automatic yet—and automation is trainable.

You got this! Anne

SPEAK FRENCH WITH ANNE