Enhancing listening skills can be difficult, especially with new sounds that are hard to distinguish for English speakers. People often tell you to listen to as many things as you can, such as the radio, TV, movies and such in French to try to get a feel for it. I’ve done these and they do work, but I have some complaints to this method:
- When you listen to the radio, and encounter a word you don’t know, how do you look it up when it’s already hard to distinguish the sounds?
- With visual media, it’s easier to comprehend the context, but it’s also just as easy to miss the word. Plus, I’ve noticed that the translated subtitles are not always the same. This is probably to keep it more fluid.
So, this is the method I use, which people may complain that it takes a very long time, but I find it to be effective enough for me.
I listen to a podcast by Laetitia Perraut who is a Parisian, broadcasting three times a week about her daily life. She is a writer of several publications on professional conversations in French-English. Based on this, I have assurance that the quality of French has little to no mistakes in grammar or pronunciation. In fact, she speaks very clearly without any slurs so it is very easy to keep up with her. She probably speaks a tad slower than most Parisians, but I think it sounds fluid enough to sound native. Every episode also has transcriptions available on her website, so you can follow it if you do not understand what she’s saying. But, I take this one step further by not only listening to the podcast, but I also copy the entire text of each podcast word-for-word in my journal. I then take the portions that I do not understand both in grammar and vocabulary and takes notes on it. Here’s what my journal looks like:
Through this method, I have been able to enhance my pronunciation significantly, and I’ve also picked up phrases and vocabulary. I take the vocabulary and add it to my Anki vocab list for review later. I know this is a time consuming method, but I think it works on the writing, reading, and listening portion of language learning.
You can find Laetitia’s podcast/blog at http://onethinginafrenchday.podbean.com/
The French Turtle Experience 