Learning French while you sleep - will it really work??

If you watch French learning videos on youtube, you’ve probably seen those “learn French while you sleep” videos.

They have hundreds of thousands or even millions of views, and they keep popping up as soon as you look for something related to learning French.

So you’ve probably wondered: Does it work? How can it possibly work?

Today, I’m sharing with you my 100% honest thoughts on this topic, including whether it works, in what conditions it may work, and especially how you can use these videos as a part of a successful French study, if you feel called to use them.

And perhaps more importantly how to make it work for you and what you can do to make it work better.

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Why are these videos so successful?

If these videos have thousands or even millions of views, it must be because people love them. They must be super efficient, right?

Well, not quite.

As it turns out, the creators of these videos have found a genius way to be successful… on YouTube! (and not as language teachers!)

According to the youtube algorithm, the longer you watch a video, the better this video is. If it wasn’t good, why would you watch it?

So, the algorithm tracks how many people watch the video, and for how long they keep watching, and adds all this up into a “total watch time”. The higher this “total watch time”, the more likely it is to show the video to other potential viewers, who will then in turn increase the watch time. This creates a snowball effect, and this is how a video goes viral.

Creating “while you sleep” videos is a genius way to hack this system. The video doesn’t even need to be very good, since the viewer is sleeping while the video plays.

A sleeping person isn’t going to click away from the video. Meanwhile, the algorithm believes that this is an excellent video, since viewers are “watching” it for 8 hours without getting bored.

So the reason why you see these videos isn’t because so many people get excellent results from them, it’s because the videos are playing for very long while the ‘viewers’ are asleep, which makes Youtube believe that the quality is insanely good.

This is a genius move from the video creators. Being a YouTube creator myself, I am in absolute awe of what they’ve done. (If you guys are reading this, kudos!)

Now, the fact that they have pulled a genius trick to get their videos discovered doesn’t say anything as to whether or not this ‘learning French while you sleep’ technique works.

So, does it work? My guess is: it’s going to be a hit or miss.

This is often the case with any ‘alternative’ language learning method.

Some students may see results and others will see no improvement. By the way if you have tried it, please share your experience in the comments below this article. I would love to read it!

2 - Why / How it could work

The reason why I think it might work is because learning French is mostly a subconscious process. About 80% of all your learning is happening subconsciously in your brain, while you’re not paying attention.

You need to know that your subconscious mind is always awake. When you are asleep, your subconscious is still listening. Your dreams are created by your subconscious mind, and many experts believe that dreams are actually the sign of the subconscious mind reorganizing itself, i.e. learning.

It has been proven that this can be used to program your mind to do specific things or to alter your mindset. For example, in one of my articles, I have mentioned that you could use lucid dreaming to practice French in your dream.

So it follows that you could also learn vocabulary or sentence structures this way.

3 - What’s the catch?

As I previously mentioned, learning French is a 4 steps process:

1.Selection

Selecting what you need/want to learn

2.Activation

Doing any kind of exercise or practice to start learning these things

3.Immersion

The subconscious part when your brain is actually learning what you have activated (I also call this the daily French bath)

4. Safe Practice

Practice speaking French in a safe space to help your new knowledge go from passive knowledge (i.e. understood only) into active knowledge you can use in real life.

By going through those steps repeatedly and diligently, you will improve your French steadily until you become fluent.

If you think of this process while you consider those ‘learn French while you sleep’ tracks you’ll notice that some of the steps are missing.

The tracks basically consists in someone reading a phrase-book to you, with french sentences or phrases and their English translation. So, in the best case scenario, a phrase book will be downloaded into your brain.

In the four steps, this corresponds to step 2 & 3. Those sentences are being activated the first time you hear them, and the repetition takes care of the immersion.

But the selection (step 1) has been done by someone else, and not specifically selected by you. This could be an issue. You need to make sure that what you learn is actually relevant, otherwise, you’re wasting your (sleeping) time.

More importantly, the last step, safe practice, is completely not covered.

So, in the best case scenario, you will have a lot of passive knowledge of French words and sentences, and you’ll be able to understand them when you hear them (assuming the French speaker isn’t speaking faster or with a very different accent than the narrators of your ‘learn French while you sleep’ tracks - which they often do).

But in no case can those tracks help you actually speak French. In order to make this passive knowledge become active, the only way is to practice speaking French. When you’re awake.

Technically you could practice in your dreams but that requires a lot of training and/or equipment. The average French learner is very far from being able to do that.

Nor do you need to. I myself am not able to do this (or better say, not yet, it’s something I really intend on learning in the future). I still have been able to become a 6-language polyglot without it.

There is a lot of research in this area, but as of today, as an untrained person, you cannot hope to go to sleep, listen to a track and wake up speaking French better.

In the best case scenario you’ll get the new words & sentences into your passive knowledge, but the tracks won’t teach you how to use this new knowledge.

This is why many students may not see any improvement at all in their ability to speak French, after using these tracks (or any books, CDs or methods that do not include speaking practice). They may have lots of now words in their passive vocabulary, but they still can’t use those. They may not even know that those words are in their brains.

I see many students in that exact situation: they have learned for years, even with lots of dedication but still can hardly make a sentence. It’s very frustrating for them. And those ‘learn French while you sleep’ tracks most likely won’t help with that.

So what gives?

4) How to include those tracks in a successful French study

If you feel called to try out those tracks, you can definitely make them an asset in your study plan. Here’s what to do to reap the most benefits.

Do not rely on those tracks exclusively (for all the reasons listed above)
Make sure the content of the track is relevant to your personal French goals (more about this in this article)
Include some speaking practice (I share 3 ways that you can include speaking from day 1 in your study in this video)

You can consider signing up for a 1-1 coaching program with me. We’ll spend almost all our time together improving your speaking skills.

Active practice can also be achieved by writing in French.

Writing will never replace speaking (you still need to find ways to speak French), but it will help improve your skills by making you practice retrieving words in your memory and forming sentences. For this reason, almost all my 1-1 students write a text in French for me every week, and I also recommend that they post in French in our French Fluency Accelerator community.

I also recommend journaling in French. Writing a couple sentences about your personal life every day can go a long way, even if you never show it to anyone.

Remember to practice your daily French bath. Using the ‘learning French while you sleep’ track is basically a variation of the daily French bath. The daily French bath consists in listening to any French content, songs, videos, podcasts, movies… you pick. I recommend you do everyday, while you’re awake, but you shouldn’t be focusing too hard on it. It’s great to have something French playing in the background when you do other things, like driving, cleaning, working out, etc.

If you do all these things, you’ll see that your brain starts to access the words that you have learned (whether during your sleep or while awake), and this will speed up your progress, as the words start moving from your passive vocabulary into your active vocabulary.

Obviously it would be a lot better to have tracks that are personalized and made or at least selected for your level and your goals.

However, since those tracks are free and it doesn’t cost any time since you’re asleep anyway, if you feel so compelled, I recommend you give it a try.

Let me know how it goes in the comments!

Your next steps

If you like this way of learning French, you will love to learn with me as a student or client. Please check out:

My 1-1 coaching program, The French Transformation, if you need to improve your French fast.
My group program, The French Fluency Accelerator, if you’d like to join a community of students from all over the world. We have weekly practice calls together and the best online video library to learn French.

Pro tip: you don’t need to choose!

All my 1-1 clients are invited to join the French Accelerator free of charge.

Feel free to book a call with me now to discuss options.

Round author pic.png — About The Author

Angel Pretot is a French learning coach. He works online with English speakers from all over the world, helping them learn French fast and become fluent.
You can work with him, in his one-on-one program the French Transformation or join a global community of French learners in his group program the French Fluency Accelerator.