Dear French Story Listeners,
It’s la rentrée, that particular feeling in the air when September asks us, gently, what we’d like to begin again.
Maybe it’s French, for you. Maybe it’s been a while, or maybe you’ve never quite started at all.
The body learns first
Here’s something I believe deeply, after years of teaching this way: your body understands a language long before your brain can explain it.
Think about how you first learned to smile back at someone smiling at you.
Nobody handed you a rulebook. You watched, you felt it in your body, and the meaning simply arrived.
That’s how language first settles into us. Not through translation. Not through memorising lists. Through the body, first.
Body before book
It’s why every session I teach begins this way: body before book, always.
Before I ever ask you to say a word in French, I show it to you.
A gesture. A small action. Something you can watch and feel, so the meaning lands before the grammar does.
It’s gentle, playful even.
And for beginners especially, it takes away the fear of “getting it wrong” — because there’s nothing to get wrong yet.
You’re just watching, and letting French in.
A 5-day course, just for this rentrée
And it’s why, for this rentrée, Ben & I have put together something new: a 5-day course for beginners, built entirely around this idea.
Five short, funny stories by Bernard Friot, real French, not textbook sentences, each one opening with a little gesture before the story unfolds.
This is Ketchup, the first story in our 5-story beginner course. Real French, real humour!
My hope is simple: that you start this school year the way French is meant to be learned — by listening, watching, and understanding, rather than by studying.
Watch it for yourself
In the very first story of the 5-day course for beginners, there’s a small verb I love teaching: soupire — to sigh.
You don’t need me to translate it. You’ll see exactly what I mean. I’ve shared the opening of that first session on YouTube, free for you to watch!
Watch the start of Session 1 →https://youtu.be/Jt6ZEQpvYOE
If you’d like to begin
The full course is there for you.
Five stories, five sessions, videos, synced audio and text, transcripts, and comprehension questions, yours to keep for life.
One simple payment, no subscription. Just a gentle way in, or a way back in.
€49 through the end of September — €99 after that.
Click here to begin →https://www.aliceayel.com/boutique/
À bientôt,
Alice & Ben 💕