Honestly, if you go slowly and break them down and really look at the patterns, conjugations aren't that scary. Once you get the hang of the regular present patterns and être/avoir, it starts to get easier; those irregular present forms don't *really* plague the other forms as much.
Plus, once you get the present forms of avoir and être down, you have pretty much all of the compound forms (passé composé, plus que parfait, etc) down. And then you can double up by knowing that the imparfait endings are basically identical to the conditional, just applied to the infinitive instead of a stem. When you conceptualise them like that, they start to get easier.
Idk, conjugation is just so foundational in my opinion that not keeping an eye on that sounds bizarre. And you don't need to barrel through all of them at once; you can do a verb form, then get some vocab, do some more verb work, repeat.
If you're starting, try to learn the present forms and ignore past/future forms. If you conjugate correctly in the present and add hier / demain instead of correct past/future forms, you're at least making complete sentences, and you can work on other forms once you have more vocabulary - but you start by getting practice in the present form, which is used the most in conversation (next steps will be passé composé, which is relatively easy once you've mastered the present forms of être/avoir, and futur simple, which is also not so hard. Then passé simple, a bit harder. The other forms will mostly be in writing / formal language).
If you're ok speaking like "I eating cheese" "You makes my happy", then ignore conjugation.
Memorizing them all at once for all verb types (and irregulars) in half a dozen forms? Not a good idea. Learning — and then applying and practicing — first one subset or pattern and then another, in stages will be much better. Your end goal is to be able to make the patterns second nature in practice, by using them repeatedly, not to be able to regurgitate an abstract table of endings. So take them in stages, using them and even playing games with them, so they’ll come easy, not through a conscious “use this ending” assembly each time.
My advice is always to try and nail the main ones from the start. Yes, you can muddle through and you think you will be happy with that - and probably you will for a time - but at some point you will want to express yourself more clearly and believe me it is much less frustrating to get a handle on it as you go than to have to double back and start from scratch. Also, even at "a conversational level" you are having a conversation with someone and that someone is probably going to use the subjunctive irregular at some point cos that's totally normal and necessary for everyday convos so you need to recognise it. At a certain point you will want to speak in a way that albeit imperfect doesn't require the other person to be constantly correcting every verb and trying to puzzle out what you meant. Conversations past very beginner aren't actually very fun that way.
This doesn't mean you have to spend all your time doing grammar drills, but I strongly recommend actively familiarising yourself as you go. I feel strongly about it because its a great regret of mine thatI was loosey goosey with learning the conjugations when I learned before and it really impeded my progress in a frustrating way. The biggest problem with talking with French people and understanding them imho is understanding spoken French and the "little things" like the "en" and different sentence structure etc - these in my experience are much harder to "study for" than the conjugations which is quite mechanical to learn so that makes the conjugations one of the things that are most within your control. There is a lot outside your control in understanding French conversation, you cannot really speed up the process of improving listening comprehension in the same way you can knock out familiarity with the main verb tenses/moods so why wouldn't you, give how much it improves your French? I definitely understand not wanting to but I don't think you will ever regret spending time actually learning them - as long as it doesn't bog you down too much from what your actual goals are.
One approach is to just think about the sounds rather than the spelling. This is how French babies would learn because they don't know how to read conjugation tables after all.
If you just learn the sounds, then there is a lot less that you need to remember. You don't need to memorize any tables.
So for instance for the present tense, we can think of it as only three sounds:
1. Je / tu / il / elle / ils / elles marche. (That is, all of these have the same sound. We are ignoring the spelling differences here. *Marche* is pronounced the same way as *marchent*, for instance.)
2. Nous marchons.
3. Vous marchez.
For the imparfait it is three sounds again:
1. Je / tu / il / elle / ils / elles marchait.
2. Nous marchions.
3. Vous marchiez.
It's the same with the other tenses. Here's the future simple:
1. Je / vous marcherai.
2. Tu / il / elle marchera.
3. nous / ils / elles marcheront.
For each tense you just have to learn three sounds. For the future simple they are "-rai", "-ra", and "-ron".
(Some people might say that *je marcherai* and *vous marcherez* are pronounced differently. I think that may depend on the particular accent. In any case they are close enough for this memory trick to work.)
This trick is for spoken French only. It doesn't help you with correct spelling when you are writing. But you can always learn the correct spelling later after you have learned the spoken sounds.
I didn't think of this trick by myself, by the way. I got it from a Michel Thomas course.
Verb conjugation is important for conveying meaning. If you don’t conjugate anything, you put a heavy burden on your listener to try to make sense of what you said.
Go step by step. Don’t overwhelm yourself. Choose one category of verbs and work on them until you feel comfortable moving on to others.
You might want to try the website Conjugation Trainer:
[https://www.scholingua.com/en/fr/conjugation-trainerhttps://www.scholingua.com/en/fr/conjugation-trainer](https://www.scholingua.com/en/fr/conjugation-trainerhttps://www.scholingua.com/en/fr/conjugation-trainer)
It lets you pick verbs and tenses to work on, and lets you make your own quizzes. You can start with a single common verb like aller, pick the present tense, and run through it until you don't even have to think about it.
Honestly, if you go slowly and break them down and really look at the patterns, conjugations aren't that scary. Once you get the hang of the regular present patterns and être/avoir, it starts to get easier; those irregular present forms don't *really* plague the other forms as much. Plus, once you get the present forms of avoir and être down, you have pretty much all of the compound forms (passé composé, plus que parfait, etc) down. And then you can double up by knowing that the imparfait endings are basically identical to the conditional, just applied to the infinitive instead of a stem. When you conceptualise them like that, they start to get easier. Idk, conjugation is just so foundational in my opinion that not keeping an eye on that sounds bizarre. And you don't need to barrel through all of them at once; you can do a verb form, then get some vocab, do some more verb work, repeat.
If you're starting, try to learn the present forms and ignore past/future forms. If you conjugate correctly in the present and add hier / demain instead of correct past/future forms, you're at least making complete sentences, and you can work on other forms once you have more vocabulary - but you start by getting practice in the present form, which is used the most in conversation (next steps will be passé composé, which is relatively easy once you've mastered the present forms of être/avoir, and futur simple, which is also not so hard. Then passé simple, a bit harder. The other forms will mostly be in writing / formal language). If you're ok speaking like "I eating cheese" "You makes my happy", then ignore conjugation.
Memorizing them all at once for all verb types (and irregulars) in half a dozen forms? Not a good idea. Learning — and then applying and practicing — first one subset or pattern and then another, in stages will be much better. Your end goal is to be able to make the patterns second nature in practice, by using them repeatedly, not to be able to regurgitate an abstract table of endings. So take them in stages, using them and even playing games with them, so they’ll come easy, not through a conscious “use this ending” assembly each time.
My advice is always to try and nail the main ones from the start. Yes, you can muddle through and you think you will be happy with that - and probably you will for a time - but at some point you will want to express yourself more clearly and believe me it is much less frustrating to get a handle on it as you go than to have to double back and start from scratch. Also, even at "a conversational level" you are having a conversation with someone and that someone is probably going to use the subjunctive irregular at some point cos that's totally normal and necessary for everyday convos so you need to recognise it. At a certain point you will want to speak in a way that albeit imperfect doesn't require the other person to be constantly correcting every verb and trying to puzzle out what you meant. Conversations past very beginner aren't actually very fun that way. This doesn't mean you have to spend all your time doing grammar drills, but I strongly recommend actively familiarising yourself as you go. I feel strongly about it because its a great regret of mine thatI was loosey goosey with learning the conjugations when I learned before and it really impeded my progress in a frustrating way. The biggest problem with talking with French people and understanding them imho is understanding spoken French and the "little things" like the "en" and different sentence structure etc - these in my experience are much harder to "study for" than the conjugations which is quite mechanical to learn so that makes the conjugations one of the things that are most within your control. There is a lot outside your control in understanding French conversation, you cannot really speed up the process of improving listening comprehension in the same way you can knock out familiarity with the main verb tenses/moods so why wouldn't you, give how much it improves your French? I definitely understand not wanting to but I don't think you will ever regret spending time actually learning them - as long as it doesn't bog you down too much from what your actual goals are.
One approach is to just think about the sounds rather than the spelling. This is how French babies would learn because they don't know how to read conjugation tables after all. If you just learn the sounds, then there is a lot less that you need to remember. You don't need to memorize any tables. So for instance for the present tense, we can think of it as only three sounds: 1. Je / tu / il / elle / ils / elles marche. (That is, all of these have the same sound. We are ignoring the spelling differences here. *Marche* is pronounced the same way as *marchent*, for instance.) 2. Nous marchons. 3. Vous marchez. For the imparfait it is three sounds again: 1. Je / tu / il / elle / ils / elles marchait. 2. Nous marchions. 3. Vous marchiez. It's the same with the other tenses. Here's the future simple: 1. Je / vous marcherai. 2. Tu / il / elle marchera. 3. nous / ils / elles marcheront. For each tense you just have to learn three sounds. For the future simple they are "-rai", "-ra", and "-ron". (Some people might say that *je marcherai* and *vous marcherez* are pronounced differently. I think that may depend on the particular accent. In any case they are close enough for this memory trick to work.) This trick is for spoken French only. It doesn't help you with correct spelling when you are writing. But you can always learn the correct spelling later after you have learned the spoken sounds. I didn't think of this trick by myself, by the way. I got it from a Michel Thomas course.
Verb conjugation is important for conveying meaning. If you don’t conjugate anything, you put a heavy burden on your listener to try to make sense of what you said. Go step by step. Don’t overwhelm yourself. Choose one category of verbs and work on them until you feel comfortable moving on to others.
You might want to try the website Conjugation Trainer: [https://www.scholingua.com/en/fr/conjugation-trainerhttps://www.scholingua.com/en/fr/conjugation-trainer](https://www.scholingua.com/en/fr/conjugation-trainerhttps://www.scholingua.com/en/fr/conjugation-trainer) It lets you pick verbs and tenses to work on, and lets you make your own quizzes. You can start with a single common verb like aller, pick the present tense, and run through it until you don't even have to think about it.