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Understanding spoken French is what we do worst, isn't it? We learn to communicate in French at a tourist level; we can read newspapers and books with the aid of a dictionary; but we cannot easily understand French radio or  television. And as for films - impossible.

It's a problem that seems to get worse as our level of French improves. If we ask a question in the awful gibberish of the tourist, the nice French will reply slowly and clearly. As we become more fluent, they reply  quickly and idiomatically - and we have a problem. Also, it always seems that the level of oral comprehension lags behind our general ability in the language. It is very frustrating.
 
The traditional approach to learning to listen is the audio magazine. You get an audio cassette or CD, and an accompanying magazine with the text, and, usually some new vocabulary.

This works fine, and it is the approach we adopt on this site. But there are two big problems.

The first is that you need a level of difficulty which is just right for you.  It is a waste of time listening to something too easy, and it is deeply frustrating to try to understand something for which your ear is simply not trained. The range of competence within any audio magazine is really quite limited.

The second is that the world of French language teaching seems to assume that after A-level standard you can understand anything and everything. In fact, you've just got to the level of following the news on French radio. As for documentaries, TV series and films - forget it.

Why the lack of materials? Partly because it is easy to produce a studio recording of clear slow French at intermediate level. At an advanced level you need recordings of a wide variety of idiomatic French. And you need transcripts, which are difficult and expensive to produce.

So that's what we do here. The Index to the site contains links to a wealth of sound recordings on the Internet, many with text, and the objective is to use this resource to offer weekly exercises covering many different registers. 

The first thing you need to do is make sure that this is the right level for you. The Magazines and Books page will help you. The exercises on this site are for people who can cope pretty well with Authentik en français. The other test is French radio. Get a receiver with long wave. The frequencies are on the Radio page. Can you follow -pretty well - the hourly news update on France Inter? Would you like to enjoy the other programmes : 2000 ans d'histoire, le fou du roi, La-bas si j'y suis? That's what we do here.

So - Magazines and Books first, then come back here.

 
Welcome back!  Sonsenfrancais aims to provide weekly listening exercises at your level. So - read the  Methodology page next

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