90% of french speaking individuals speak english very well.
However, in many places (Quebec for instance) the people who speak french usually won't speak to you in English unless you at least TRY to talk in French.
I took 5 years of French in school, and although I'm pretty rusty at it now, it's easy to learn vocabulary, but hard to learn forms of verbs and such. They have a different form of verb that is dependant on audience/subject that can be a bit much to tackle on your own.
Whether you are looking to become fluent in French or just looking to be able to understand what is going on, if you are doing it alone memorize as many nouns as you possibly can. Then you may want to consider some French classes at a community college or something to start tackling speech and proper usage of verbs.