How do I build (French) listening skills?

[dustinmacdonald]

A silly question, sure, but I'm completely lost with how to build my listening skills. I know how to build reading skills, by reading! With listening though, I'm (pardon the pun) flying blind. I can read a book, or watch a thriller movie with French subtitles and understand what's going on. Turn the subtitles off, and I can't follow Peppa Pig.

Is there a specific strategy I can follow to build my listening skills?

When I was learning to read I read intensively first, by reading a page at a time and writing every word I didn't know down. I would add it to Anki, and then practice until I knew it. Then when I finished the book I'd return to the beginning and read the book again, until I could comfortably read the book and filling in the missing words with context. After 5 books I hardly needed to look anything up.

Is there something similar I can do with listening? How do I do "intensive listening"? Can FSI/DLI help in this regard at all, do I listen to the tapes without the textbook lessons? Or use them together? I just don't know where to begin.

[Lawyer&Mom]

Pick a show you actually want to watch (probably not Peppa). A French dub of an American show you are already familiar with is perfect, especially if it has lots and lots of seasons. Start watching and keep watching. The first 20 hours will be rough. A nice bump at 50 hours and 200 hours. At this point you can easily switch to native shows. At about 500 hours the problem isn’t hearing the French, but just not knowing French well enough. Keep watching.

I’m sure there are intensive methods, but the extensive method is just so easy and fun, if you can let go of trying to understand everything and just let the process take care of itself.

[daegga]

I second the 500h - volume is key.
I prefer to spend about half of that time on audio only material such as audio books and podcasts. The remainder would be filled with TV, with and without (TL) subtitles. Usually, if I can get subtitles with a single click, I take them, otherwise I go without. If all the material comes with subtitles, just toss a coin.

[MaggieMae]

I feel this in my soul. Star Wars: the Clone Wars has the German audio, but not subtitles. I'm fighting my way through it, but it's still a battle. I miss my subtitles. I know I miss a ton of info.

My German teacher once told me that in order to make good gains in listening, you have to listen to the same thing multiple times. An exercise she gave us was to listen once a day to a radio broadcast, or just something small. 1-2 min will suffice. The first time you listen, you will hear disjointed words or pieces of information. The second time you listen, those pieces start to come together a little bit. The third time, they come together even more, and by the 4th and 5th times, you're actually solidifying the information in your brain.

Now, this information is not just what is being talked about, but sentence structure, accent, the melody of the language, everything. Your brain is too overwhelmed on a first go through to process all that information, but by the 5th time, it's starting to sink in.

Also, Peppa Pig and other kid's shows/books are a LOT harder than people let on. I remember bawling because I couldn't read "Pippi Langstrumpf feiert Weinachten" (Pippi Longstocking celebrates Christmas) when I was somewhere between A2-B1. It was probably THE most traumatic event of my German career, hands down. So try not to beat yourself up too much over Peppa. Kids are smarter than we give them credit for.

[galaxyrocker]

If you can find audio material with transcripts, I recommend transcribing. It's how I trained my ear on Irish and I barely have any issues with that now, especially the dialect I've focused on (except for vocabulary). I need to get around to doing it with French.

You can see how I've done it and split it up here:

https://gaeilgechonamara.com/how-to-bes ... -any-level

This post is for Irish specifically, but can be adapted to any language quite easily in method, as long as there's a transcript for you to check yourself against.

[Dragon27]

I know how to build reading skills, by reading!

That's kinda how it goes for me with listening too.

[DaveAgain]

Listening is partly be able to match sounds to words, and partly vocabulary.

If there are books you have read in French, you can try listening to audio book versions of those first (or film/radio adaptations). You know there isn't a vocabulary problem, so any problem must be related to matching sounds to words. You could solve that by shadowing/dictation of the audio.

You could try listening to documenatries on subjects you are familiar with, and interested in, TV or radio. Listen to the same programme several times. Ideally I would choose short programmes, or break long ones down into shorter sections. Le dessous les cartes is ~15 mins and has subtitles if you're stuck.

YouTube videos are a good option as YouTube lets you both slow down the video, which can help, and rewind a few seconds with a keystroke (back arrow key).

EDIT
There's a French youtuber (Le monde des langues) who talks about language learning, he has a video on this: ASTUCE LANGUE #06 : Comment débloquer votre compréhension orale.

[Odair]

If you can already read books, a good place to start would be audiobooks. Find an audiobook that you have the text to read along, then re-listen without the text a few times.

[Kraut]

The French speak in streams of utterances 5, 10 ...words in a row... until they run out of breath. It's very difficult to isolate one single word in a stream when you listen to fast speakers. When you read, it is a different story, you can see when a new word begins and thus create meaning. When you listen you are lost.
My suggestion is dictations, there are lots of sites with a broad range of themes.
And the elreader app (https://elreader.com/) to work with texts of your choice.

[SpanishInput]

Mmm... It's still in closed Beta, but I think a promising solution could be "Nonsense". They use dubbed Hollywood movies with matching subs.