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French Listening Comprehension!? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| drp9341 Pentaglot Senior Member United States Joined 4846 days ago 115 posts - 217 votes  Speaks: Italian, English*, Spanish, Portuguese, French Studies: Japanese | Message 1 of 18 03 February 2012 at 7:04am | IP Logged | ||
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Hello everyone!
I can read french almost perfectly, like I get about 95 of the news, but when it comes to written french, even simple shows such as Albert le 5ème mousquetaire, I can't understand that much, maybe 30% which isn't really that great. I've been doing Assimil, although I am starting to loose interest in Assimil and want to jump to native material. I can write french and think in french pretty well, but I'm not sure why there's such a disconnect in the spoken French! anyone have any suggestions/ways to overcome this!? Thanks, Danny 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| juman Diglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 5152 days ago 101 posts - 129 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: French | Message 2 of 18 03 February 2012 at 8:05am | IP Logged | ||
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I'm reading a book at the same time as I listen to the audioversion of it. For me that helps a lot to work up the
listening comprehension.... Also I passivelisten a lot so while I'm working I have a radiostation like rfm.fr on in the background. As I do not understand much of it still it triggers my brain now and then as I hear words I know... Edited by juman on 03 February 2012 at 10:15am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 4943 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 3 of 18 03 February 2012 at 8:36am | IP Logged | ||
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What do you think is your main trouble?
If it is vocabulary, which is the most common listening trouble of mine for exemple, than reading or other ways of acquiring it should help you. Juman's advice will be very helpful in such a case. If it is for exemple a particular way the characters in your show speak, than it may help to watch an episode two or three times. And as you will continue, the comprehension will become much easier. Or your chosen material may be too difficult for you at this moment, or you may have got too used to not understanding (it may sound stupid, but it is really possible to panic and psychologically make understanding harder for yourself) and in that case you can try something else and return to this later. Just a few ideas. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Ellsworth Senior Member United States Joined 4891 days ago 345 posts - 528 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Swedish, Finnish, Icelandic, Irish | Message 4 of 18 03 February 2012 at 12:47pm | IP Logged | ||
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I have a copy of Harry Potter pdf, that I put into www.lingro.com, which gives me
definitions for words when I click on the word. Then I listen to the audiobook while reading along. It has helped amazingly. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6637 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 5 of 18 03 February 2012 at 3:08pm | IP Logged | ||
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It is (generally) not permitted to write dublicate messages, but in this case I'm almost tempted to do it. You have exactly the same problem which I wrote about in the thread How can I understand Romanian - just substitute "French" for "Romanian".
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Sandman Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5342 days ago 168 posts - 389 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Japanese | Message 6 of 18 04 February 2012 at 8:10am | IP Logged | ||
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It's a bit hard to say, and I must say I'm having a bit of trouble understanding whether you are saying you are having trouble "understanding" spoken French or whether it is "speaking" French you are referring to ... but I am guessing that you mean "understanding" French and if that is true then I would either guess that the voice you have in your head while you read is out of whack with the actual way French is spoken (making it hard to understand words you should "know"), or your ability to read is developed yet functionally still too slow.
If you can read French at a near native rate that means you know French vocabulary and grammar well enough to understand spoken French, as reading (and understanding) at a native speed is actually quite faster than speaking at a native speed. People read native books far faster than a native speaker can dictate that exact same reading orally. Therefore you might be able to read accurately, but still be too slow in your reading (as well as vocabulary or grammar recognition) to deal with speaking presented at real speeds. Reading in itself is not sufficient ... you must be able to read QUICKLY and effortlessly to expect spoken language to come as easily. This takes practice, but it is actually quite easy to achieve once you are at an ability where you can "read" the L2 language. Once you have the skills to read, you can fairly quickly practice that skill up to a point where you can read and understand language FAR faster than a speaker might be able to orally throw words/language at you. The other possibility is that although your reading is quick, and you understand vocabulary and grammatical structures instantly, the reading "voice" you have in your head does not match how the language is actually spoken. Therefore your ability to recognize and understand things from the written page is not helpful when those same things are introduced to you orally. In this case, which could be just as likely, you probably just need to listen to a few hundred hours of native audio and perhaps use the reading-listening technique to get used to what things are really suppose to sound like. This 2nd problem sounds more like what I went through when learning Spanish. I had instruction in high-school (much of which I had forgotten over the 15 years afterwards) but I went back and learned purely from books, reviewing vocabulary and grammar structures ... adding new vocabulary .. until I could read Spanish fairly easily. My reading was pretty strong, but listening was something I had to go back and work on as a separate, essentially undeveloped skill. It's pretty quick that way (as far as passive listening goes) but it's still something that takes a couple hundred hours (or more ..) to work on. If you have strong and quick reading skills, but you aren't very comfortable with native pronunciation it can still take a while until all those words and grammar structures you know "instantly" when they are written instead start hitting your brain at the same speed when spoken in ways you weren't fully expecting previously. Edited by Sandman on 04 February 2012 at 8:28am 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| LaughingChimp Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 4633 days ago 346 posts - 594 votes Speaks: Czech* | Message 7 of 18 04 February 2012 at 6:51pm | IP Logged | ||
You are wrong, the OP is right. Written French is rather different from spoken French, you have to learn spoken French if you want to understand spoken French. (There are no learning materials for spoken French, you have to use native material or travel to France.) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 4943 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 8 of 18 04 February 2012 at 10:06pm | IP Logged | ||
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Of course there are learning materials which can make understanding spoken French easier.
Native materials you mentioned can be used as learning resources as well, for exemple some movies especially contemporary documentaries, pieces in podcasts or some tv shows. And there are a few textbooks of spoken or colloquial French, there are even spoken language dictionaries (there is even a Czech based one). Of course they offer only limited help and you'll need to get immersed at some point but saying "there are no learning materials" is just wrong. There are learning materials for anything but sometimes need to dig deeper to find them. I don't want to sound too harsh, LaughingChimp, but I am usually quite cautions before telling someone on this forum "You are wrong.". The fact that you don't know something doesn't have to mean it doesn't exist. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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