A focused first week in French builds pronunciation and gender habits early, since both are foundational to everything that follows.
Confirm the 26 letters plus accented vowels (é, è, ê) and the œ ligature — see French Alphabet.
Practice a few common nasal-vowel words aloud (bon, vin) and notice liaison in simple phrases like "les amis" — early ear-training here pays off across the whole language.
Learn 20–30 common nouns, always paired with le or la, plus basic greetings (see French Phrases) and the tu/vous distinction.
See also the reference page: French for Beginners.
Nasal vowels and liaison — both are woven throughout the entire language, so early ear-training on them in week one pays off broadly.
Always with gender attached (le or la) from the very first encounter — retrofitting gender later is much harder than building it in from day one.
No — it's a genuinely more advanced grammar milestone, better tackled once indicative conjugation is comfortable.
Not necessarily in week one — starting with simpler counting and adding the base-twenty quirks (70-99) once basic numbers feel solid is a more manageable sequence.