A few specific habits make French's most distinctive features — liaison, gender, and its deceptive vocabulary overlap with English — click faster than treating them as isolated grammar facts.
Reading about liaison won't build the instinct to produce it correctly — saying phrases aloud repeatedly, deliberately linking words the way liaison requires, builds the habit far faster than silent study.
Whenever you learn a French word that looks like an English word, check whether it's actually a false friend (see French Vocabulary) and note it specifically — a dedicated list prevents these from becoming ingrained mistakes.
Write and say new nouns with their article every time, so gender becomes an inseparable part of the word rather than a fact to recall separately later.
Quatre-vingts and soixante-quinze look complicated on paper but follow a consistent internal logic once practiced — treat them as a specific pattern to learn, not a sign the whole number system is unpredictable.
Saying phrases aloud repeatedly, deliberately linking words the way liaison requires — reading about the rule alone doesn't build the actual speaking habit.
Keep a dedicated running list of false friends as you encounter them, rather than assuming a familiar-looking word means what it looks like it means.
No — writing and saying new nouns with their article every time makes gender part of the word itself, rather than a separate fact to try to recall later.
They're worth practicing as a specific, consistent pattern rather than treating them as random exceptions — once practiced, they follow their own internal logic reliably.
See also: French for Beginners · French Pronunciation · Learn French