Here are some of the great resources I've personally used and recommend for learning French. I've intentionally listed them in order of my own preference:
Pimsleur
Pimsleur is hands down the best way to begin learning a foreign language. I've already blogged about it, so instead of repeating myself, see here:
Pimsleur: the best way to learn a language.
French in Action
French in Action a great video-based resource with a fun story that will definitely stick with you.
Duolingo
Duolingo is a free site for language learning. The concept behind it is really cool; it's crowdsourced, created by the same person who came up with
reCAPTCHA. But you'll probably care more about it being a fun, free way to learn languages.
Le journal en français facile
Once your French gets decent, French radio station RFI (Radio France Internationale) puts out a daily news segment in French that's helpful for learners. They tend to speak a little slower, use less vocabulary, and the best part is they have transcripts for everything but the interviews. It doesn't have its own homepage, but you can get to it from here:
Langue Française
Tou.tv
At some point you'll be able to watch shows and films in French. A great resource for this is Tou.tv, which is offered by Radio Canada, the French side of Canada's national broadcasting corporation (CBC). Some of the content on Tout.tv requires a monthly subscription, but they have enough free content to keep you occupied for quite a while. It's only officially available in Canada, but if you're desparate you can access it with a VPN service like
Hola. The content is from Québec and France (and elsewhere, dubbed in French), giving you exposure to a good variety of French. The only downside is they don't have subtitles.
OffQc
Most teaching materials use the Parisian French dialect, but for those of you living in or planning to travel to Québec, the Québécois dialect can be difficult to understand particularly the further you are from urban centers such as Montréal. As an informal, spoken variety there isn't much in the way of official material to learn the ins and outs, however OffQc is an excellent free resource for learning how to understand this colourful variety of French.
Rosetta Stone
Rosetta Stone isn't the first program I recommend for language learning. Pimsleur is much more convenient and will get you speaking much more quickly. French in Action is much more fun and memorable. But Rosetta Stone is still a solid program.
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