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.
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.
From 2005 the site accumulated 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. As of 2009 many of those links are broken or out-of-date, but many are still valid
From 2006 the site stocked extracts from French television, 3-5 minutes and classed in order of difficulty from 1 - 10, where 1 is about the level of the DELF examination and 10 is hard
The first thing you need to do is make sure that you are working at 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 the hardest of these, Authentik en français, for instance.
I need to be a bit fuddy-duddy and academic at this point. A lot of people think that going to French conversation classes will help them to learn French. No. Making lists of vocabulary, doing grammar exercises is how you learn. In the same way, watching French television every day will only slightly improve your comprehension of spoken French. Our brains are very good at giving us the impression that we understand quite a lot of what we hear. In fact we understand very little, and we stick at that point.
Once you can follow fairly easily the extracts in the magazines cited above, you need to make your own transcriptions. It's the only way to realise how many gaps there are in your comprehension, and to force the brain to connect the context of what it hears, with the (always inadequate) detail of the sounds it hears, and render it intelligible.
And you need vocabulary. Lots and lots of vocabulary - including the casual expressions that French people use every day.
Is it worth it ? My goodness, yes. The best French films are superb, and must be watched in French. French stand up comics are among the best in the world. You'll be able to enjoy Corneille and Molière in the original. And indeed - if that's what grabs you - enjoy Star Academy, Koh-i-Lantor and Secret Story, the French Big Brother.
A bilingual American writer who publishes novels in both French and English once said that when he was 'in French' he was in a different world with a different history and culture. We're a long way from that point, you and I both. But we'll get there...