|
 |
Any tips for conquering Spoken French? | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| issemiyaki Diglot Newbie United States Joined 4818 days ago 38 posts - 58 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French | Message 1 of 11 06 January 2015 at 10:06am | IP Logged |
|
Despite the recent improvement to my listening abilities, I still struggle with informal spoken French.
While I can understand RFI, and the French in my Assimil and Linguaphone courses, I haven’t a clue what they’re saying on soap operas like Plus Belle La Vie. The main problem seems to be due to the numerous contractions that are made during informal speech. Any advice? Edited by issemiyaki on 06 January 2015 at 10:07am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| eyðimörk Triglot Senior Member France goo.gl/aT4FY7 Joined 3888 days ago 490 posts - 1158 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French Studies: Breton, Italian | Message 2 of 11 06 January 2015 at 10:22am | IP Logged |
|
Practise. Practise. Practise.
Great improvements come from spending a lot of time simply practising. If you don't "have a clue what they're saying" at this point, you'll want to watch something with subtitles for the hearing impaired or with an online transcript of some sort. A great place to start is with clearly enunciated documentary or news speech, rather than soap operas. You'll find something to your liking, no doubt, but for me it was Secrets d'Histoire. My husband preferred watching the news every night. Once you can sort of keep up, another option is to watch a dubbed TV series that you already like and know fairly well. That way, you spend less time trying to orient yourself in each episode and you can focus on what is being said. The high level of repetition you get from a TV series is beneficial as well. That said: it doesn't come free, at all. There's a major time commitment, here. The main idea is to keep at it. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Ogrim Heptaglot Senior Member France Joined 4428 days ago 991 posts - 1896 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, French, Romansh, German, Italian Studies: Russian, Catalan, Latin, Greek, Romanian | Message 3 of 11 06 January 2015 at 12:00pm | IP Logged |
|
I concur with eyðimörk, you need to expose yourself to a lot of spoken French. However, I also recommend that you watch programmes with clear speech, such as the news. It will make the transition to informal speech easier. And I don't want to discourage you, but it will take time. When I first arrived in France seven years ago my French was not bad, but when I wathced a French film or TV series I had a hard time understanding. Today I may still don't get a word or two here and there, but constant exposure for a long time has had its benefits.
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| tastyonions Triglot Senior Member United States goo.gl/UIdChYRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4454 days ago 1044 posts - 1823 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: Italian | Message 4 of 11 06 January 2015 at 12:31pm | IP Logged |
|
If you can already understand news, you might want to try some standup comedy as a bridge. The speech is very informal in register like in many TV shows, but that way you only have to adjust yourself to one person's way of speaking rather than dealing with banter between two or more people.
Sometimes it can be pretty fast and full of cultural references that might be opaque to you, though, so don't get discouraged. Edited by tastyonions on 06 January 2015 at 1:14pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| issemiyaki Diglot Newbie United States Joined 4818 days ago 38 posts - 58 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French | Message 5 of 11 06 January 2015 at 5:21pm | IP Logged |
|
Thanks for the tips. They're all great!
Trying not to get down on myself. I've been at this 5 months already, and I speak FLUENT Spanish. So I figured French wouldn't be as hard, but it's proving to be a bit of a challenge. As far as watching the news ... I've got the RFI app on my phone. And I've just started a program with News in Slow French. That seems to be helping A LOT. That comes with the script and offers lots of intelligent and casual phrases that you can use in conversation as well. I can only understand about 50 to 60% of native-News. "What good is that going to do me," I say sometimes. I'm at the point where I'll pick up an entire phrase or two, but sometimes, I still won't know EXACTLY what they're talking about. But even this is an improvement from a month ago. There just seems to be a gap between understanding Assimil and understanding native-material. Maybe I just need to give it more time? I'm on lesson 61 of Assimil French with Ease - but I'll also be tackling Using French, Business French, Linguaphone and Hugo probably. Again, thanks for the advice, and I'll keep plugging away. Edited by issemiyaki on 06 January 2015 at 5:24pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5051 days ago 2237 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 6 of 11 06 January 2015 at 5:49pm | IP Logged |
|
You can also try listening to the news with an exact transcript at NHK World from Japan. Open the "ecoutez maintenant" link in a new tab. Then, click on the first item and follow along with the transcript. The order the news items read isn't intuitive at first but you'll figure it out. You do have to click on each one individually. You can also go to their Spanish service for the same stories in Spanish and make your own bilingual texts. NHK news broke me into listening to Portuguese. there are several ways you can use a transcript to help in listening.
Also, if you are somewhat skilled with a computer, have a look at emk's Spanish subs2srs experiment. It took me a while to get to effortless listening in Portuguese. The news helped along with speaking to natives and watching a few tv series, especially novelas. Edited by iguanamon on 07 January 2015 at 12:52am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| eyðimörk Triglot Senior Member France goo.gl/aT4FY7 Joined 3888 days ago 490 posts - 1158 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French Studies: Breton, Italian | Message 7 of 11 06 January 2015 at 6:53pm | IP Logged |
|
Not really taking any discount you may be getting from Spanish into account:
If you've only been at it for five months and haven't finished the Assimil's French With Ease yet, you can't really expect high levels of comprehension with anything unfamiliar and native. Even if you did manage to hear every single word spoken, you'd probably have trouble keeping up because your vocabulary just isn't up for it. That's another thing, by the way, that helps with listening comprehension at this stage: improving your overall vocabulary. A lot of my early difficulties with French listening was simply an inability to turn perceived syllables into words, which is particularly important with a language like conversational French where it's not always easy to hear otherwise where words begin and where they end. Listening to French, in a way, is nearly as much about interpreting as it is about perceiving. Knowledge of vocabulary tells you that you just heard two words and not one, knowledge of grammar tells you whether you just heard "aller" or "allez", etc. That doesn't mean that you shouldn't listen to native materials before you've reached a certain level, though I'd still advise using subtitles or a script. I just want to highlight that this is not necessarily a "simple" problem of listening comprehension, but something that might best be "remedied" with a more encompassing approach. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4996 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 8 of 11 07 January 2015 at 10:36am | IP Logged |
|
What helped me bridge the gap between Assimil and real media, and continues to help me with difficult colloquial speech, is listening/watching with French subtitles or a transcript. TV (there are transcripts available for the dubbed versions of The Simpsons and Buffy for example), films (list of some movies with accurate subtitles), audiobooks, the news podcasts already mentioned, etc.
Also remember that some materials are easier than others, so you can work your way up. As a generalisation: learning resources, then news, then audiobooks, then dubbed TV, then native TV (and you could further divide TV into documentaries which are easier than soap operas which are easier than crime series, and so on). Films vary a lot, there are easy ones and hard ones. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
