French Comprehension - Almost There?

[issemiyaki]

Hi gang,

Really need your help on this one. (How do I keep improving? Keeping expanding my listening comprehension in French to understand high-level French.)

I feel like I've just had a breakthrough. And strangely enough, it comes after not having listened to French for about a month. I was in Europe, speaking Spanish and Italian, and then when I got home, I started listening to French again, and I noticed my ears seemed to be catching almost everything. So, I turned on a quick episode of Plus Belle La Vie. This has always been my nemesis, simply because of the speed, and the way they eat words. Well, I simply couldn't believe it. I was able to grab large chunks and phrases like:

- c'est pas le moment de lâcher tout
- on va trouver une solution
- on va vous aider
- il va s'en sortir

Now, moving forward do you think watching things like Plus Belle La Vie will continue to sharpen my ear?

[Ani]

Yes keep listening. Especially if you feel like you've just me a breakthrough, it's important to keep going to solidify it. I know sometimes for myself my listening comprehension "wobbles" a little. One day it's excellent, the next takes me several minutes to warm up or I'll randomly start missing phrases. Don't be discouraged if your new ability seems like it disappears one day. It'll be back the next or maybe just a few hours later. This is a good show to watch -- pronunciation and speed are closer to what I typically hear from native speakers than many other shows.

[Kraut]

You might enjoy French telephone pranks:

https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =19&t=7165

[NoManches]

I've also noticed big improvements in my listening after taking long "breaks". I think it is important to listen consistently, but sometimes giving your brain a break allows it to reorganize everything. I don't think the brain is actually "reorganizing" anything but that's what I think of it as. As a matter of fact, I've noticed many instances in my life where I stop learning something for a few weeks and when I pick it up again I all of a sudden understand the material or understand concepts that were once possible for me.

My biggest advice for listening:

Listen a lot an listen to everything. Listen to things that are very easy, but also listen to things that are very hard. Listen to different accents, listen to male speakers and female speakers...and listen to kids too. Also, do a lot of reading. It's hard to understand something spoken if you can't understand it in written form.

[issemiyaki]

Thanks so much.

Ani, you were right. My new-found listening powers can be pretty fickle. When I went to try them out on a movie, I had to rely 90% on the subtitles in French. (And then 50% of the time, I had to turn over to the English subtitles just to figure out what the French subtitles were saying.)

At first, I just wanted to cry, and felt like a loser. But then I went back and said: "I'm not going to let this defeat me. What's the next best thing I can do if I can't understand this?" So, I calmed down and did not throw the computer through the window like I wanted to. Instead, I looked at the French phrase, and checked how it was translated in the English subtitles. In the end, I learned some cool phrases, like:

Vous êtes quittes - now you're even (in this context)
Vous vous y retrouver ? - as in, "you got that?"
Ça fait des semaines que nous BALADENT - they've been giving us the RUN AROUND for weeks.

So, there were tons of phrases like that that I found extremely useful. But when I went back to listen, it didn't sound much clearer, despite now knowing what was said. It still sounded a little like "mush," but this time around, I sort of knew what the "mush" was saying.

So Ani, you're right. I'll have to hang in there.

And NoManches, I will indeed listen to everything. This movie was actually a departure for me. I'm used to listening to the radio where they don't sound like they do in movies. It seems like the French CHANGE the way the speak in movies. Or maybe it's the compactness of the conversations, meaning they are trying to get in a lot of information in a short period of time, and that makes it difficult? Because, I can follow a normal conversation on the radio between two people for example, but put it in a movie, and it becomes next to impossible. I don't get it.

And it's a shame because movies, I believe, are the crown jewel of language learning, the hold the key to a lot of great language that will indeed make you sound absolutely native. Only problem is, understanding them.

[nooj]

Just a couple of corrections.

Vous vous y retrouvez ? - as in, "you got that?"
Ça fait des semaines qu'ils nous BALADENT - they've been giving us the RUN AROUND for weeks.

Anyway, good work and keep on going. If you find radio easy and movies difficult, the important thing is not to keep to radio, but to attack the movies. Weaknesses will always be weaknesses if we don't work at them.

[NoManches]

And NoManches, I will indeed listen to everything. This movie was actually a departure for me. I'm used to listening to the radio where they don't sound like they do in movies. It seems like the French CHANGE the way the speak in movies. Or maybe it's the compactness of the conversations, meaning they are trying to get in a lot of information in a short period of time, and that makes it difficult? Because, I can follow a normal conversation on the radio between two people for example, but put it in a movie, and it becomes next to impossible. I don't get it.

And it's a shame because movies, I believe, are the crown jewel of language learning, the hold the key to a lot of great language that will indeed make you sound absolutely native. Only problem is, understanding them.

I'll be honest, I don't even bother with movies in my TL (Spanish). I have a bunch of Spanish movies and I really enjoy watching them, but for improving your listening movies are pretty dang hard. What I prefer is TV shows. Getting used to the same characters speaking over the course of many episodes makes it a lot easier. Plus, with TV shows they are more likely to use the same vocabulary over and over again, so it's like spaced repetition. I've noticed that when I start a new show it usually takes me a few episodes to get used to the new actors and vocabulary. Sometimes I'll just watch the first few episodes intensively in order to really train my ear. After that I just binge watch.


I've been learning Spanish for over 5 years and movies are still very tricky for me. I know how you feel in terms of frustration and wanting to cry/throw computers out the window. The key is to keep working at it, practicing every day, and having fun while doing it.

One thing that keeps me motivated is telling myself that there are bad days and good days, but anytime I listen to anything in my TL it is helping my listening comprehension. So even if I watch a show and have poor comprehension, I know it's not a waste of time and is helping with my comprehension in the long term.

[iguanamon]

One of the reasons people learn French is to enjoy the highly renowned French cinema. Still, I agree with NoManches. I couldn't have said it better myself. Films are a "one-off" experience and don't allow enough time to get used to actors' voices. As a one-off, vocabulary doesn't repeat either. Series are the way to train listening to colloquial language. Over 70-100 episodes listening to the same characters and seeing similar situations played out, the learner has a chance to consolidate much of what is heard. Then, after watching a few series, movies are much less of an issue.

Still, films have an issue with arcane vocabulary depending on the genre. Gritty crime films can have sometimes incomprehensible slang for a non-native trying to learn a language. I found "Cidade de Deus" hard to understand when I was learning Portuguese. After a few hundred hours of series and novelas, I came back to it and I was able to pick out words and phrases I didn't know. I would ask friends about them if I couldn't find a reference in the Informal Dictionary or my favorite English learners' site for Portuguese-speakers. I also read the book by Paulo Lins.

If language-learning can be likened to an analogy with school, learner podcasts, straight-up newscasts and youtubers are middle-school; series are high school; films are university. To get much out of film as a learner, a learner has to be able to know what the unknown words and phrases are first. Otherwise, they will be frustrated and unable to enjoy the film fully or gain much benefit from having listened. Crawl before you walk, walk before you run. Films are running.

I recommend trying a dubbed series to start, if you are a native English-speaker, you can pick a series you may be familiar with having seen it before. Good English subs will be able, French-subs will be hit or miss with matching the French dub. Emk started the "Buffy" watching thing going because he found a site with accurate transcripts. The link can be found here on the forum or the wiki somewhere. Also, have a look at the tv series for sale on Amazon.fr and then look at samples on youtube in French dub. Subtitles in srt format can be downloaded online. You can compare what's downloaded to what you hear on the samples. For example- Game of Thrones, The Walking Dead, Westworld, The Handmaid's Tale, Futurama, The Simpsons, all have French (France) dubs and subs in both English and French available. You can make your own parallel text and read them in advance and then watch. A transcript can be used in many ways. Even non-accurate subs can be useful.

[Ani]

Most of the speech is fully contracted informal French. There are three levels of speech you regularly hear. The first pronounces basically everything. You might hear that of someone is giving a speech, maybe in a podcast when delivered by one person. The second is more contracted And is more what you get in dubbed TV shows or podcasts with a calm casual conversion. The third is Plus Bell La Vie, most speech between closely aquatinted native speakers etc.

The good news is, listening to lots of the first can get you ready for the second, and lots of the second will open up the third. That's not to say you should restrict yourself to any particular content until you're ready, but just go easy on yourself and realize that sound information that you were relying on really isn't there. You'll have to get more familiar with the language to fill in all the gaps automatically.

[garyb]

I hate to say it, but listening comprehension is something that always feels "almost there"! It's normal to think you pretty much understand everything, only to be thrown by a particular film or a fast conversation between natives or a regional accent and then realise you still have a long way to go. That's just life... Sounds like you're doing great though if you're picking out colloquial expressions from a series, so I'd just say keep up the work and consider the wise advice in the other replies.

TV series aren't always easier than films: many modern comedy films and most films from more than a couple of decades ago are far easier to follow than Braquo or Engrenages for example, and I'm saying this even after having watched all six seasons of the latter. As a generalisation it works, especially if you consider it by genre (gritty crime films can be even more challenging), and series do have the advantage of being longer.