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Speakeasy wrote:This question may have been posed in the past and, if so, please accept my apologies for diverting your attention to something that has already been dealt with. I am looking for French-language Language Forums, similar to this one, and would greatly appreciate responses containing links to such forums. Merci à l'avance!

Peut-être, celui-ci ? French Chat.

There is also this chat but I didn't try it.

Does anyone have advice on how to be able to understand spoken French? If there is a particular method that had helped you to improve your listening comprehension? A specific method beyond just watch movies and listen to music. I am someone that enjoys having structured process to follow and having a rough idea on what to expect.

I can read articles comfortably and I can understand majority of B2/C1 texts but however my listening is probably at honestly an A2/a very very weak B1. It's frustrating how unequal my French ability is for different skills.

I plan on taking the DALF C1 exam at some time next week and my biggest worry is being able to have realistic chance at passing the listening section of the exam.

Sarafina wrote:Does anyone have advice on how to be able to understand spoken French? If there is a particular method that had helped you to improve your listening comprehension? A specific method beyond just watch movies and listen to music. I am someone that enjoys having structured process to follow and having a rough idea on what to expect.

I can read articles comfortably and I can understand majority of B2/C1 texts but however my listening is probably at honestly an A2/a very very weak B1. It's frustrating how unequal my French ability is for different skills.

I plan on taking the DALF C1 exam at some time next week and my biggest worry is being able to have realistic chance at passing the listening section of the exam.

In How to Learn a foreign Language [PDF], Paul Nation suggests slowing the audio down, and then gradually bringing it back to real time.

A useful way to begin is to get a recording of a text which is also available in written form. The text should not be too long, around 200 or 300 words. The first step is to study the written text carefully to make sure that it is completely understandable. Then, listen to the text while looking at the written version, setting the digital playback to a slow speed. Then over several days, increase the speed of the playback so that eventually you are listening to the text at a close to normal speed.

Repeated listening (without increasing the speed) can also be done with short films or movies with subtitles. Repetition is an important factor in fluency development because repeated material becomes easier, and repetition provides quantity of practice.

There are exam preparation books [PDF] that probably have a variety of appropriate recordings.

Sarafina wrote:Does anyone have advice on how to be able to understand spoken French? If there is a particular method that had helped you to improve your listening comprehension? A specific method beyond just watch movies and listen to music. I am someone that enjoys having structured process to follow and having a rough idea on what to expect.

My listening comprehension has improved a lot using this resource with Anki (though note that it is not perfect and does have some flaws). I had it set up with the audio only on the front of the card and the French and English on the reverse side. Play the front and try to parse the audio and repeat it back. I imagine you would get similar results with Glossika sentences, although I’ve never used it.

Whatever you use, I think you need a resource with a transcription which uses vocabulary and structures which you understand. Then listen to extracts and try to parse the audio using the transcription as feedback to check whether you heard correctly. If you didn’t, listen again and try to parse it whilst reading the transcription.

VLC-Player has a very comfortable A-B repeat function.
French telephone pranks are great fun, there are also scripts for some of them.

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

Une ressource très riche, pointue et complète pour l'orthographe, le projet Voltaire. Gratuit.
https://www.projet-voltaire.fr

5 millions of users and 3000 schools in the project... A serious game!

Sarafina wrote:Does anyone have advice on how to be able to understand spoken French? If there is a particular method that had helped you to improve your listening comprehension? A specific method beyond just watch movies and listen to music. I am someone that enjoys having structured process to follow and having a rough idea on what to expect.

I can read articles comfortably and I can understand majority of B2/C1 texts but however my listening is probably at honestly an A2/a very very weak B1. It's frustrating how unequal my French ability is for different skills.

I plan on taking the DALF C1 exam at some time next week and my biggest worry is being able to have realistic chance at passing the listening section of the exam.

If you are around A2, perhaps starting with something easier like audiobooks could work

TV series work. Something like 200-300 hours, that is a good goal to aim for. That is the "structured approach" I used. But I was at B2, when I started. What to expect: first signs of progress after a few episodes, then after one season, then an apparent drop in the ability every time you start a new series. After a few hundred hours, I was finding C2 listening easy.

If you want more "structure" than that, you could benefit from intensive listening, and basically dissect stuff you listen to and anki everything. It is likely to give you faster results in terms of vocabulary, but it still won't be the kind of training for the real life that the extensive listening is.

For even more structure: are you using the audio coming with coursebooks enough? The selection cannot get more structured than that. Plus there are various Comprehension orale books and DELF/DALF preparation books with tons of graded audio.

Sarafina wrote:Does anyone have advice on how to be able to understand spoken French? If there is a particular method that had helped you to improve your listening comprehension? A specific method beyond just watch movies and listen to music. I am someone that enjoys having structured process to follow and having a rough idea on what to expect.

I’ve learnt to understand spoken French by living in Belgium, but I guess it’s not the method you’re looking for Do here’s how I’ve learnt to understand English: those times, I loved Harry Potter. I knew all the three films that were those times almost by heart. So: I watched them in English with subtitles. At first, I was reading the titles to understand everything. Then I was watching it again and again. I was reading the titles and listening, to get familiar with the language. Then I was trying to less read the titles and more listen what the people were saying.

Then I found other films and did the same, but each time, I tried to do it quicklier and quicklier.