Having a pretty advanced intellectual understanding of a language doesn't mean necessarily that you can decode "on the fly" what native speakers say.s_allard wrote:Understand how this works and you have a pretty advanced understanding of French.
Both intensive and extensive pratice are necessary, imho: I have a russian friend who has been learning french for a very long time (8 years), but never really made the effort to immerse himself in french material: only russian teachers, conversations in little groups with comrades also learning french, grammar exercises (a lot !!!), intensive listening on books like "grammaire en dialogues" (not a bad thing in itself, the last teacher does its job as he noticed the big weakness on the listening abilities), but no extensive activities with native material : the result is a B2 level with heavily fossilized mistakes, an unability to understand native french speakers when they speak normally.
I think that if he would give up his lessons with his teacher for a few months and binge watch a few Tv series in french (and read a few books), it would make a huge difference for him...but he doesn't want.