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Why can’t I understand French | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Ashley_Victrola Senior Member United States Joined 5708 days ago 416 posts - 429 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: French, Romanian | Message 25 of 32 17 April 2009 at 4:48pm | IP Logged | ||
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Hi, I totally have the same prob as you with spoken French...this website has helped. Its for the exact purpose of giving you exposure to hearing and understanding it. They have a bunch of clips. Some are even in a cartoon kid's show-like format. Each clip has questions you answer about it at the end. The best part is they have several levels of questions for different levels of comprehension and usually several different quizzes for each level. the clips you watch aren't long, maybe a couple minutes tops.
I found it accidentally when looking for French TV online. I'll post both that link and the site where I found a list of other links of French TV. http://www.apprendre.tv http://french.about.com/od/tv/French_and_Francophone_Televis ion_Stations_Watch_French_TV.htm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| sprachefin Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5748 days ago 300 posts - 317 votes Speaks: German*, English, Spanish Studies: French, Turkish, Mandarin, Bulgarian, Persian, Dutch | Message 26 of 32 17 April 2009 at 7:47pm | IP Logged | ||
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If you have problems with learning to understand rapid spoken French, why not spend a few days in Quebec during
a holiday. Seeing as you live in Canada, this shouldn't be so much of a problem. I hope to be going to Paris in a few months to improve my spoken French, once I have evolved into advanced fluency. I'm sure it would be plenty easy for you to take a trip to Quebec. A few days sure wouldn't help but if you could spend even more time or spread it out over a longer holiday, then you would be immersed as much as possible. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| blindsheep Triglot Senior Member Spain Joined 6362 days ago 503 posts - 507 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: German | Message 28 of 32 18 April 2009 at 12:10am | IP Logged | ||
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Read my language log... I've managed to get to quite a decent listening comprehension level while not living in a french speaking place... but really the real answer like some others have said is just listening a lot first with subtitles or transcripts and then once you get to about 95% comprehension with the subs, drop them... you just need a solid vocabulary before you start. I've probably put in 130+ listening hours or so to get to where I am now (upper B2 level) when I add up the audiobooks and tv I've gone through. Its a lot of time, but if you don't live in the country where the language is spoken it works quite well.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 Fasulye Heptaglot Winner TAC 2012 Moderator Germany fasulyespolyglotblog Joined 5849 days ago 5460 posts - 6006 votes 1 sounds Speaks: German*, DutchC1, EnglishB2, French, Italian, Spanish, Esperanto Studies: Latin, Danish, Norwegian, Turkish Personal Language Map | Message 30 of 32 19 April 2009 at 8:27pm | IP Logged | ||
I am on the same level with my French, it is B2, I have no people to speak French with and I am going to use the French language professionally in a callcenter. So I have to advance my language level. So I have started collecting all the audio sources availble on the internet. For me it is important to listen ot a good variation of language usage: colloquial French - French news - special topics - scientific French - politics in French - a good mixture is important. I do find transcripts helpful, because they give me the chance to look up unknown words. Often the trnscripts of podcasts are not free of charge, so I can only listen. I find the internet an even better source than my French TV program TV5, because I myself am free to chose, whereas on TV there is a program schedule. Fasulye-Babylonia 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Sprachgenie Decaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5711 days ago 128 posts - 165 votes Speaks: German*, Dutch, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Faroese, Icelandic, Flemish, Persian, Swiss-German Studies: English, Belarusian | Message 31 of 32 22 April 2009 at 10:54pm | IP Logged | ||
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The reason you don't understand spoken French is because you don't know what the words and idioms mean. When reading French you can infer what is meant without understanding all the words because you can look them up. I had this same issue when I started learning Norwegian. I thought it I wasn't understanding radio shows because of some sort of accent or mumbling. Now that I speak (and understand) Norwegian on a near-native level I realize that my earlier problems had only to do with me not knowing the meanings of words and phrases. So it will be a matter of learning vocab (in context).
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Caveben Diglot Groupie United Kingdom Joined 5667 days ago 40 posts - 40 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Italian, Romanian, Slovenian | Message 32 of 32 24 May 2009 at 7:30am | IP Logged | ||
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This is the exact problem I have. I can speak, write and read at a far more advanced level than I can understand spoken French. When I am having a conversation with someone it is fine. I have context so it is easier to make educated guesses. It's other forms of spoken French that give me trouble.
If I turn on the radio I oftentimes find that I can understand the majority of the individual words in a sentence but without the context it is almost like my brain cannot work quickly enough to attach any meaning to them before the next sentence starts. I had wondered if just listening to more media alone would help in itself. The consensus in the previous posts seems to be that it does. Also the post immediately above this is interesting. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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