There are many different ways you can learn how to speak french. French is a popular language used throughout the world. French is one of the romance languages. If you already speak Italian or Spanish then you may find it easy to learn French, as the languages are all based on Latin so the grammar and words are similar.
You do not need to attend a French class in person as many people live in areas that do not offer French or they cannot meet the time commitment. There are other options such as web based courses and tapes that can be used to learn how to speak French. How you want to use French can help dictate the best learning method. If you are vacationing in France then a conversational French course would be the best and most tapes focus on conversational French. If you are doing business in French and need to be able to read and write documents then a more formal course that includes grammar and writing is suggested.
No matter what you want to learn you will need to know some basic grammar, as there are different verb tense and masculine and feminine endings and words. Unlike when speaking English there is also a specific way of speaking to your friends versus speaking to strangers and important individuals. The basics that you will cover in a French course include sentence structure, plurals, adjectives, verb tense, verbs, pronoun, gender, articles and pronunciation.