French verb morphology can be a real challenge for learners as well as for teachers of French as a foreign language. Since part of the complexity comes from the use of orthography in traditional descriptions, we wrote a new conjugation booklet exclusively based on phonetic transcription. This booklet was experimentally used in a class of 30 A2 level students during 11 weeks. In the first part of this article, we review some of the issues related to the use of orthography in the description of French verb morphology. We show how French spelling might hinder learners’ understanding of the regularities of morphological patterns, thus justifying our approach. In the second part, we discuss some of the results of our experimentation of this approach and present students' overall impression, collected through a questionnaire.