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Listening Comprehension of French? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Questions About Your Target Languages |  | |
| GeekGuy Newbie China Joined 5441 days ago 21 posts - 23 votes Studies: French | Message 1 of 12 08 January 2010 at 6:25pm | IP Logged | ||
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I have learnt French for about 1 year. We do not actually have French curriculum at school, so I have to teach myself in my spare time. I tried to find a professional institution to help me with my French, and finally with someone's recommendation, I joined L'Alliance Française, which provided me with a few opportunities to talk to a native-speaker. It is a good place to practise, but not an ideal place to improve. I learned complicated grammatical rules at home meanwhile I made an effort to enhance my vocab. Unfortunately, it did not go smoothly at all with my study. Pronounciation is a big challenge. Unlike English, it is straightforward and dull. I have difficulty in imitating French accent. To make the matter worse, the biggest obstacle I have ever encountered is my listening comprehension. They speak too fast, and they sometimes reduce something when they are talking.
To overcome this problem, I have tried a host of methods, only to find that my vain attempt was just a waste of time. I could not say that watching films or listening to music helps improve unless you have reached that level, does it? Having a chance to expose myself to a native speaker is supposed to be to my advantage, but it is plain that they purposefully slow down a lot(and they are supposed to do that) when they taught us in classes. I guess that may explain my poor listening comprehension when I took a test, in which you were required to understand the level of a native speaker. I know that I should not worry too much about my listening comprehension as well as my French pronounciation since I am still a beginner, but it seems to me that some steps should be taken. I do not know whether you had this problem or not as a beginner when you was devoting yourself to this language. I would appreciate it if you could possibly share me with your ways to improve a little bit. Thanks. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| MmeFleiss Diglot Groupie United States Joined 5986 days ago 58 posts - 72 votes  Speaks: English*, Tagalog Studies: Japanese, French, Spanish | Message 2 of 12 08 January 2010 at 6:55pm | IP Logged | ||
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Watching French in Action definitely helped me with my listening comprehension. You can find out how to watch the videos if you search around the forum. I'm pretty sure those who live outside of the USA have to do some sort of workaround to watch it.
I also watched a lot of cartoons online since I think they tend to speak a bit slower (but not unaturally so). I usually go to http://www.repeatlab.com/ or http://www.fomny.com/ Edited by MmeFleiss on 08 January 2010 at 6:56pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| GeekGuy Newbie China Joined 5441 days ago 21 posts - 23 votes Studies: French | Message 3 of 12 09 January 2010 at 3:45am | IP Logged | ||
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It takes time to buffer, but it is entertaining to rewatch the movie I have watched before, Naruto! Obviously, they speak lower. If they have French subtitles, that would be perfect. En tout cas, il faut m'habituer aux mots avec lesquels les français bavardent toujours. Petit à petit, l'oiseau fait son nid.
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| didomessi Newbie United States Joined 4654 days ago 2 posts - 13 votes | Message 4 of 12 18 May 2012 at 11:25am | IP Logged | ||
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I found several useful sites for improving listening comprehension:
http://www.listentofrench.org/ http://www.sonsenfrancais.org/ http://www.rfi.fr/lffr/statiq ues/accueil_apprendre.asp http://www.uqtr.ca/argot/menu.html Edited by didomessi on 18 May 2012 at 11:34am 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| geoffw Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4692 days ago 1134 posts - 1865 votes Speaks: English*, German, Yiddish Studies: Modern Hebrew, French, Dutch, Italian, Russian | Message 5 of 12 18 May 2012 at 4:36pm | IP Logged | ||
I no longer agree with this. If you have a reasonable amount that you COULD understand if it were spoken more slowly, listening at high speed is the way to understand at full speed. I have spent a good bit of time with French and Dutch listening, usually only in the background while I do something else, to be honest, from native speakers at full speed, such as news programs and the like. When I started, I understood little or nothing. Over time, it slowly started coming into focus, and I found myself understanding more and more. Then one day I discovered I was able to relate back, in great detail, what people in a Dutch podcast had been discussing for several minutes, and I realized that I actually had been understanding something. I haven't spent very much time studying French so far, but I still find myself having stretches where I start to catch the thread, and the longer I keep up this exercise the more I understand. Summary: if you want to improve listening, I say just keep listening, and don't worry if you don't understand at first. Include other learning techniques as well, of course, including reading, and speaking if you are able. 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Sunja Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6089 days ago 2020 posts - 2295 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English*, German Studies: French, Mandarin | Message 6 of 12 18 May 2012 at 7:05pm | IP Logged | ||
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Ecoute podcast is spoken slower than normal (slower than RFI).
The Ashcombe School has some French videos of students both native and non-native, speaking in interview format. The videos have transcripts and they're all A1-A2. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| catullus_roar Quadrilingual Octoglot Groupie Australia Joined 4572 days ago 89 posts - 184 votes Speaks: Malay, Hokkien*, English*, Mandarin*, Cantonese*, French, German, Spanish Studies: Italian, Latin, Armenian, Afrikaans, Russian | Message 7 of 12 23 May 2012 at 1:54pm | IP Logged | ||
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I have been speaking french for 9 years, since I was 4. To improve your listening comprehension, you might want to try to listen to French radio. Google "France Inter" and you will find the most accurate Parisian radio stations which are available internationally for free. Even if you do not understand it all at first, keep listening to it. After a few days, you will start to pick up a few words here and there, and after, sentences and grammatical structures. Also, it will introduce you to a variety of cool music that you might be more interested in listening to (For me, listening to music in the language helps tremendously).
As for pronunciation, the secret to French is all in the lips. You should work more closely with your tutor to correct your liaisons, as well as your silent consonants, u vs o etc. De- (as in devoir) and re- (as in reportage) should also be pronounced in the correct tone and accent. These are the major signs that give away someone who is not a native of France. Reading aloud for half an hour to an hour every day helps tremendously. Do not try to read fast or expressively - focus on getting the pronunciation right, and mark out the wrong words when the teacher corrects you. This is important, as even though you may not revisit the text again, the action of marking 'jolts' your brain into remembering similar words which require similar attention to pronunciation. You are right in that you should not worry about making mistakes in the accent and in the listening comprehension as you have only spoken French for one year. Keep it up and bonne chance! :) 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| pesahson Diglot Senior Member Poland Joined 5732 days ago 448 posts - 840 votes Speaks: Polish*, English Studies: French, Portuguese, Norwegian | Message 8 of 12 06 June 2012 at 9:50am | IP Logged | ||
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Your ultimate goal is to be able to understand French when spoken by natives. In order to do that you have to listen to natives speaking French. A lot of it. That is the secret. I have been doing it for some time now, on and off, and I've noticed that even though for some time I neglected other aspects of French (basically I did very little) my comprehension improved! I may not know every word, but I can guess the spelling of it when it is spoken and look it up. I listen to France Info mostly. On the top of the page you have links to France Inter that catullus roar mentioned, also to France Culture. They are worth checking out. There are plenty of podcasts on almost every subject.
I think you really should persevere with listening even though it seems too fast, because I remember that I had the same problem with English (I learned it the traditional way). I could say and read almost anything but I had trouble with understand natives. So listening skills don't just magically improve when you know enough vocabulary. I recommend you check out LingQ. It's free to sing in. They have a lot of listening materials and they always come with text. I especially recommend Steven Kaufmann's book The Linguist. Guide personnel d'apprentissage des langues. You can download the audio. He writes about how he learned languages so it was very interesting to me. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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