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dcoetzee

From A1 to C1 listening in a year: my process

Advice

I recently took the TCF Canada and they assessed my listening level at 524/699 (C1 equivalent). I started out 2020 with some good reading skills but abominable listening skills, I would get hopelessly lost trying to understand even slow and simple spoken French. Here is the process I used:

Step 1: resources for beginning learners

At all points in time, you should be listening to something where you can understand most of it but there's 10-20% that you don't get. That means when you're first starting out, you should not be listening right away to content created for natives. You'll get overwhelmed and it won't be fun or helpful. You want content created for learners, and it should come with subtitles or a transcript. Examples:

  • Duolingo Stories. Very slow and clear. Listen to it without looking at the text, then read the text, then click the speaker icon to listen to it again.
  • innerFrench: Slow clear speech, good for A2/B1. I recommend starting with the innerFrench podcast from the earliest episodes, which are the most accessible. There are free transcripts if you register on his website and you should absolutely use them.
    • Listen to each sentence first without reading the transcript, then read the transcript, then use the left arrow key to go back and listen to the sentence again until you understand everything clearly.
  • News in Slow French: Expensive ($20/mo) but really engaging content, slow and clear, an excellent transcript with difficult phrases translated.
  • Je Parle Baguette by Charles, another podcast for beginner listeners. No transcript on these but slow and clear.

I recommend using good noise-cancelling headphones for best clarity.

Step 2: clear formal speech for natives

Once you get comfortable with the beginner resources above and feel like more of a challenge, it's time to move to content created for natives. The easiest speech to follow is clear, formal, at a normal speed, and with no background noise. Examples:

Step 3: fast informal speech (shows with subtitles, lyric videos)

Once you feel comfortable with clear, formal content, the next place to go is a show or series on Netflix, which will contain dialog resembling day-to-day familiar speech (including informal vocabulary and slang). Start with a show you've already seen and enjoyed in English. This will give you a ton of context that will make understanding the speech easier. Note that there is even more content available in French if you VPN into France.

Install the Language Learning with Netflix plugin. This has three valuable features:

  1. Shows the English and French subtitles at the same time and a transcript on the right-hand side (warning: subtitles may not match speech).
  2. Use the arrow keys to move between lines and repeat the last line.
  3. Use the 1 and 2 keys to slow down/speed up the audio.

When getting into informal speech, be familiar with the ways that spoken French is abbreviated, such as silent e's, dropping words like ne in ne...pas, abbreviating tu to "t", combining "j" with adjacent consonants, etc. I made a detailed post on this topic.

Light and deep studying

I distinguish two types of studying:

  • Light studying: listen closely to the audio, but never pause/rewind, turn off subtitles/transcripts, and never look anything up. Try to just gather what you can. This is great to do while doing other chores like driving, exercise, cooking/eating, cleaning, in bed before sleep, etc. It's also great practice for "real-world" listening.
  • Deep studying: the goal is to understand 100% of what is said. If you don't understand a line clearly, following these steps to try to understand it:
    • Repeat the line (left/down arrow keys in Language Learning with Netflix/YouTube plugin)
    • Slow it down (1 and 2 keys in Language Learning with Netflix/YouTube plugin)
    • Check subtitles (both French and English)
    • Feed the audio into Google speech recognition (see NOTE 1 at bottom).
    • Try to type the word based on how it sounds. Google it to correct spelling errors.
    • If the words in the French subtitles don't match: look up synonymes of the words in the subtitles.
    • Look up translations of the words in the English subtitles on Reverso Context.
    • If all else fails, ask a native speaker on HiNative.
  • When deep studying Look up new words and phrases in online dictionaries and in Reverso Context to make sure you understand them clearly. (Optional: write down new vocabulary to review later in Anki flashcards.) In the end, you should be able to play the line with your eyes closed and hear and understand every word clearly. This is time consuming but you learn a lot.

I recommend to always be watching at least two different shows, one in light studying mode, one in deep studying mode. Generally I watch a show first in light studying mode before going back and watching it in deep study mode to catch everything I missed.

Build up your watchlist, drop English, put in a ton of hours

Once you've watched some stuff you've already seen in English, watch shows that you want to or have been planning to watch, or shows that look appealing. I recommend Netflix and Disney+. Go through recommendations and your history, find shows that look good, verify they have French audio and subtitles, and add them to your watchlist. Build up a big watchlist.

Once you are in this phase, I recommend dropping English media. Stop watching shows in English, listening to music/podcasts/radio in English, playing games in English, etc. Set your PC, phone, tablet, etc to French. Consume French media only (with audio, not just subtitles!) for total immersion. I typically spend at least 4-6 hours a day consuming French content.

Music

This is also the stage where you start building up your French music playlist. At this stage, you will need to look up the lyrics to understand most songs. Once you find a song you like the sound of, search for a lyric video on YouTube using the word "paroles" (if you can't find one, just google the paroles in text).

  • Everyone's into a different type of music, but I like pop music so I started with Les 50 chansons les plus populaires en France on Spotify, Paroles Français on YouTube, and searching for "musique" and "paroles" on YouTube. Once you have a song you like, Spotify makes it easy to find other songs by the same artists and related artists.

Step 4: fast informal speech (no video, no subtitles)

The last and hardest step. This is fast informal native content, with no video, no subtitles, no context to help you. Lots of slang, people speaking over each other. All the training wheels are off. This includes:

  • YouTube channels that use a lot of fast informal language like C'est une autre histoire (has subtitles).
  • Podcasts that have multiple hosts having an informal discussion (e.g. 2 Heures de Perdues, which is about films, or RTL's Les Grosse Têtes which is comedy).
  • French radio stations, which you can stream online. Search for "radio en ligne".
  • Unscripted YouTube channels like vlog channels and Let's Play channels, and French streams on Twitch.
  • YouTube channels in specialized subjects such as science, history, etc. that will help expand your vocabulary in specialized areas.
  • Certain series originally produced in French use a lot of fast informal speech, e.g. La Révolution.
  • Complex fiction audiobooks. These are formal speech but they use a lot of advanced vocabulary and contain informal dialogue. For example Là où chantent les écrevisses. Again, you can buy the ebook as a transcript to reference.
  • Find native conversation partners on HelloTalk and/or informal native tutors on italki and talk to them on a weekly basis. (This is also really important for your speaking skills.)

NOTE 1: Feeding audio into Google speech recognition. This is a trick for helping with audio where you can't hear the words clearly and subtitles are unavailable or don't match. There are several ways to do this on PC:

  1. Some audio systems have a "What U Hear" or "Stereo Mix" recording device, just set it as default recording device.
  2. Get an audio splitter cable (male to 2xfemale) and a male-male cable so you can feed your speaker output back into your mic port (while also still listening to it on your speakers).
  3. Use Voicemeeter Banana to feed your audio output simultaneously to your speakers and to a virtual audio cable device, then set the virtual audio cable as your default recording device.
  4. If all else fails, just hold your speaker up to your microphone.

Then open up Google Translate (French) and click the microphone button. You may need to use the Language Learning for Netflix plugin to slow down the speech for better recognition.

I also use this together with Anki flashcards to record samples of new words or phrases so I can replay them later. Also, I use this with HiNative to record samples of audio for natives to help me with.

NOTE 2: Dialect. Most of the media out there uses a métropole French accent. If it's important to you to learn Québec French, you need to use different resources to learn it! See my post on that. I spent maybe 5-10% of my time on français québécois resources.

NOTE 3: Practicing numbers. See my post: Tip for practicing listening to numbers.

That's it! Ask me any questions you have. :)

Posted Jan 15, 2021, 9:45 AM UTC · edited

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