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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| ozgoz Newbie United Kingdom Joined 5464 days ago 5 posts - 6 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 1 of 22 08 April 2010 at 6:52pm | IP Logged |
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Hi guys,
This is regarding French.. I just wanted to get other peoples feelings and opinions on something. So far I've completed Michel Thomas foundation, advanced and builder courses. I am about to do the Rose Hayden-Lee MT vocab course. I have also completed Pimsleur unit's 1, 2 and 3. I work in a company that has a LOT of French speakers so I converse with them a bit, plus a lot of English people who speak French. I also have spent many hours on google translations (very far from perfect I know), just messing around. Now, I can pretty much say almost anything I want. Of course I don't know the word for shed, but I can say la petite maison, dans le jardin, comment ça ce dit?? So I could certainly get by pretty well (je pense). But.....if I listen to French radio it may as well be Japanese? Is this a common problem, or is it usually the other way around? Don't people usually have the ability to listen and understand, but struggle to speak? I know I have learnt so far via courses that aim to get you speaking. So my question is, how do you combat this problem, and is it normal? Do I have to put as much effort into what I have done so far (10 months to get to this point) into just listening? I suspect that my problem is a lack of vocab? But then if I can say most common every day words, I should be able to understand them? Or not? Thanks in advance and je suis desole pour le grand message! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Splog Diglot Senior Member Czech Republic anthonylauder.c Joined 5673 days ago 1062 posts - 3263 votes  Speaks: English*, Czech Studies: Mandarin | Message 2 of 22 08 April 2010 at 7:05pm | IP Logged |
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You just need to listen to a heck of a lot of audio (hours a day if possible), and pay particular attention at first to hearing the sounds rather than worrying about meaning. Once your brain has got used to picking up on the sounds and noticing the word boundaries, the rest will fall into place (subject, of course, to your vocabulary).
2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| ozgoz Newbie United Kingdom Joined 5464 days ago 5 posts - 6 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 3 of 22 08 April 2010 at 7:11pm | IP Logged |
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Thanks for your reply.
That's absolutely fascinating to me. I'm very interested in how the brain and mind works, so to think that it can get used to the sounds and flow of something it doesn't initially understand is as I say, fascinating. Like 99% of people I'm sure, I lead a busy (read: boring) day job filled life, so my best bet is audio walking to work. Do you think that just by listening to podcasts (so I can't see people doing things) would be enough for my brain to pick these patterns up? I also plan on doing some intensive vocab work to aid all this too. Again thanks, we are incredibly lucky to be living in the age of the internet. Where would you find info like this in 1970. Well, I guess you would have to get off your backside and do some real information hunting ha ha. Cheers. Edited by ozgoz on 08 April 2010 at 7:12pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Miznia Diglot Newbie United States Joined 5355 days ago 37 posts - 42 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Cantonese, Korean, Thai, Vietnamese | Message 4 of 22 08 April 2010 at 7:11pm | IP Logged |
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Normal... When I studied Japanese they made us listen to cassette tapes and write down what we heard. It was incredibly futile (seemingly) and tedious. But now I can understand/parse spoken Japanese much more easily than French, which I can read fine but never practiced listening to.
I wouldn't expect you to be able to pick out words you know, if you have trouble parsing the sentence you're hearing. Listen to the language as much as you can (attentively) and it will get easier 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6015 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 5 of 22 08 April 2010 at 7:15pm | IP Logged |
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Of course it's normal. You've barely started -- this language lark takes a while.
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5434 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 6 of 22 08 April 2010 at 7:40pm | IP Logged |
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This is actually a very common problem. Generally speaking, people tend to understand better than they can speak. This because getting a gist of what is being said is relatively easy compared to having to mobilize all the resources to actually speak.
That said, when listening to spoken language, it's important to be aware that casual spontaneous speech is very different from not only the rehearsed language of most recordings but also from the language of professional speakers such as politicians, journalists, lawyers, etc. Real informal speech can be somewhat unintelligible and very difficult to understand because of all kinds of linguistic and non-linguistic interferences. Something that many of us experience nearly every day is the following: We are looking at a news report in the target language. We have no problem understanding the commentator or the reporter. The program cuts to interviews with witnesses or ordinary people and all of a sudden we can hardly understand what is being said. That's because journalists are trained to speak a certain way that is somewhat different from the way most people talk. I think the only solution, as other people have pointed out here, is sheer exposure to spoken language. Something that my students really like is a unique product that is a very sophisticated variation of the phrase-a-day calendar. The neat thing is that on the web site www.langcal.com all the daily phrases are recorded and can be heard for free. Of course, it's even better if you have the phrases in front of you, but just listening to them is lot's of fun. Although these are studio recordings, the content is very realistic. I was told they intend to add recording with various accents. Edited by s_allard on 08 April 2010 at 7:42pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| The Blaz Senior Member Canada theblazblog.blogspotRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5604 days ago 120 posts - 176 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Swahili, French, Sign Language, Esperanto | Message 7 of 22 08 April 2010 at 8:01pm | IP Logged |
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Start by listening to a large amount of material for which you have a transcript (there
are varieties of ways to do this, one more elaborate way is referred to on this forum as L-R). After you have listened to the material and read along with it a few times, you will be able to listen to the audio and pick out every distinct word. Eventually, listen to new material without the aid of a transcript. Perhaps you won't understand any of it, but keep on trying, and practice active listening skills. I found it was useful to become accustomed to certain French voices. I began to watch The Simpsons in French and at first I understood very little, but over time I came to recognize the character's voices and now I understand much more. This process takes time but you will see results, and it will be very rewarding when you find yourself watching tv and listening to radio programs in French with greater ease. Edit: You may also want to try using a decent set of headphones to listen to native material. When I watch French TV on my computer I find my comprehension goes up considerably when I'm wearing headphones. Eventually you will process the language faster and become more comfortable interpreting quick speech with poor audio, but this is a good intermediate step. Edited by The Blaz on 08 April 2010 at 8:04pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| global_gizzy Senior Member United States maxcollege.blogspot. Joined 5707 days ago 275 posts - 310 votes Studies: Spanish | Message 8 of 22 08 April 2010 at 9:03pm | IP Logged |
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I'm having the same problem as the OP with Spanish!
Though he's way ahead of me. I dont know why/how he discusses things in French with native French speakers regularly but cant understand. I dont know many Spanish speakers and rarely do I get the chance to speak to them in Spanish, but I'm always thrown for a loop unless they speak very, very slowly and very clearly. (You know, that situation that is NEVER going to happen in real life? Yeah, thats the one in which I MIGHT be able to understand spoken Spanish. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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