Why You Can't UNDERSTAND Spoken French

so you've been learning French for a while now and you still cannot understand spoken French this can either be when you're learning French online listening to audio podcasts Etc or when someone French speaks to you in real life and you can't understand what they're saying it's frustrating in this video I'll explain to you exactly why you can't understand when they speak French native speakers even other people are learning French speaking to you and then what you can do about it how you can improve your comprehension skills when you hear Spen French so the first thing

is reading and listening level it's extremely important because the way I say French and I tell my students this all the time it's that you've got your inputs and outputs just like in English so you'll notice that even when a baby learns its first language just like you you may have learned English as your first language like I did and for that you you basically you don't speak French you don't speak English pardon me right away you read and listen a lot so the main thing is for babies you know they can't read yet so

they listen to start off okay so they're hearing lots of noises their parents talking you know other babies making sounds and slowly by slowly then they bring in basic reading and the parent will be with there you know reading out loud word by word sentence by sentence and Via that then they can finally speak they form words and sentences and full conversations same thing in French you know you're trying to learn French to be able to speak well perfect that was my goal to start as well in order to do that you need to increase

your reading and listening level to be able to speak well I see it as your just like a horse and carriage situation basically where you've got the horse which is your reading and listening level and the carriage which is your writing and speaking level because remembering that writing and speaking that's outputs and then inputs is reading and listening so if you improve your reading and listening then the speaking and writing will simply follow that's what you need to do in order to do that what I found is reading and listening at the exact same time

is really good now all my students say use a book it's called asml you can find it online asking your French with these cost about $100 to buy make sure you buy with the audio and I've got videos here on my channel explain to exactly how to use it just like my students do I help them use it and with that book it's really good because you've got the French for each of the chapters and it's a conversation it's a story and you've got the audio so the French is written out and you've got the

audio throughout the whole book as well so every single time my students are reading the French they're listening as well what that means is their brain is simply combining the two you know they're getting double the input they don't have to stress if they don't understand something I know something that comes up very often when he's first learning French you may be listening to podcasts or other resources where you've just got the audio and with regards to that it can be difficult because if you miss one word in a sentence then you've likely finding that

okay I can't even understand the rest of the sentence I just lose it and it you lose confidence you don't know what's going on could be confusing could be frustrating you feel like you're wasting your time now if you have the transcripts right there if you have the French sentences you can close your eyes listen to the French and then after you've listened just fact check yourself you know check the written French and see how good your listening there'll be a couple of words you miss but that's perfect you can just fill it in again

play the audio again and then read while you're listening the second time around and that way you're going to be just following the words on your page on the screen online if you're on a laptop or phone and basically you're going to have the pronunciation following with your eyes it's very powerful because you don't have to do any guess work you can see it right there and with regards to pronunciation you know and understanding spoken French that's tied in very well so for you to be able to speak well not just understand spoken French that's

why you clicked on this video not just understand spoken French which is simply oral comprehension you've also got producing words producing sentences and engaging in you know proper conversations that you want to be doing with your French well firstly you need to get a good listening level and to do that do reading and listening at the same time if you read and listen at the exact same time that's going to give you a lot of support a lot of confidence so you can understand things simply because if you read something without listening to it there

will be some pronunciation you don't get okay so you'll miss out on that if you listen to something without reading there will be some written out words you don't pick up when you listen cuz I see lots of people study French like this you may be doing this as well reading one thing okay close the book or move away from the article you're reading and then you'll do listening separate I listen to a podcast I won't read the transcript well you want to be doing both at the same time because then you get double the

input and it supports you your reading helps your listening and your listening helps your reading that's the first thing second thing here confidence so you know I've it's something you even in my first video here on YouTube that I did about a year ago is I identified confidence as a big thing because most people um you know naturally you don't have people around you personally who have learned French from English before you may have some French native speakers you know that may be family members cousins that may be friends colleagues and the problem is though

they haven't learned French from English so if you don't have anyone who's done that well that's very difficult for you because that's the path you need to take you've currently got English you need to learn French there's a gap there you need to fill it you may be 10% 20% through you might have developed a beginner level in read and listening great you're on your way that's really good but you need to keep moving along and it's going to get it's going to get difficult okay there's ups and downs you may have clicked on this

video because you're at one of those downs and that's okay you can still learn French you don't give up when it's hard but it's difficult to develop the confidence to be able to do something if you don't know someone personally who has done that thing now that's something number of my students have found really useful is that that I'm there with them one to one every single week showing them new things helping them work through the problems that naturally they run into when they're learning French because they're native in English just like I am and

they need to learn French but they haven't done it before they don't have others around them who've done it I'm ending up as that person with them as in every question they've got I've already thought of it tens of times previously because I started learning French in 2020 so for me I've been you know in contact with the French language for four years I've been fluent for you know two and a half of those years and to that effect it's something where you know no problem in French is big for me so I'm able to

give them a really reasoned response for example one of my students was worrying about the difference and the usage between set as in c s versus IL i l space es s and yes there is a difference but because he's at a beginner level I simply told him hey you know that that's a grammar difference because your goal is to speak French naturally and fluently with other French speakers other people in conversation and even if you got every single time that wrong in sentence let's say if he you know needed to say something like for

example if we say the time in French we say for example now you know we say okay it's it's 8:00 okay 8:00 at night well if you said every single person listening to you would still understand you to the exact same level so why would you need to know the difference it's a grammatical error we don't care about grammar we're not trying to pass an exam so that's where questions like that that come up very often for example another one is masculine vers feminine when do you use it oh now how do I memorize it

that was one of my questions um from another student J me and to that effect it's it's a simple answer of no like you just learn it with the word just learn it with the noun and you know simply VI yourself reading and listening really well it will naturally come you don't have to memorize right that that's the difference there excuse the sunshine as well the sun is literally just come out I'll um I'll edit it down you'll probably notice a difference in the light um it'll be different um I'll keep going just got to

survive at a moment got to wear sunglasses next time um um and it's simply a confidence thing it's where okay there's lots of things you go to en Canada is going to be different difficult for you and what you can simply do is work through best you can the problems you have have a look online you know I know that my videos are helpful um there's also other people online you can use to to learn from um hang on I'll be back I'm going to get rid of that that sun all right I'm back now

the sun uh Sun needed to be stopped there it was going crazy it was coming right for my eyes attacking me um what I was saying is the the confidence you need to INF French that's going to be sourced simply from being around people who can give you good advice that might be me it might be someone else you need that person though simply because if you go online yes you can have your questions answered but you know but the problem is who's answering them like what French native speakers okay but do they ever have

to learn from English no so they don't understand you another person that might answer is someone who you know writes a blog post or something or online and they learn French bya grammar rules but they can't speak good french well if you want to be able to speak French understand spoken French their advice isn't helpful to you you know simply because they're on a different path they might be on a your more University study based rout and that's okay but they're not going to be helpful to you so that's important okay getting the confidence from

people who can actually give you good advice and in terms of your personal study and progressing understanding spoken French you're going to develop confidence in understanding spoken French from leveling up your reading and listening as I said in the first point and the last Point here is momentum now if you want to get good at understanding spoken French it's something where you need to really be building up some speed and some positive momentum towards doing well in your French now this doesn't have to be an hour 2 hours a day study lots of my students

are doing 30 40 minutes a day and that's sufficient you know in 3 to 6 months they'll be at an intermediate level for reading and listening and then we'll begin speaking because after 3 six months that's all it takes you can absolutely hear an intermediate reading and listening level understanding spoken French to an intermediate level so that means if a native speaker is talking not at a super fast or you know crazy level you know using lots and lots of slang but just talking at a conversational Pace just like this here you know could be

on the street online podcasts you'll be able to understand you'll be able to understand podcasts you'll be able to understand native French YouTube videos just like this one maybe some Vlog videos some travel Style videos might be talking about cars investing food wine doesn't matter could be any you'll be able to understand them and Via that it's they're only going to reach that intermediate understanding of spoken French because they've put in the work for 3 to 6 months to develop that good momentum and to build that confidence once again as I just discussed it's simply

that you're only going to know that you can understand the spoken French once you put in a couple of months of work if you're not serious about learning the French and doing the work you won't succeed because everyone has bad days but the people who achieve things they do the things they know they have to do and they know they should do even if they're not feeling good that's extremely important okay now lots of you watching this video you may be older than me and you already know that okay you've had way more life experienceing

me but the thing is it's always where we're doing something new in life for example learning French or learning an instrument a new sport any new skill and we can get complacent simply because we let's just say we we might build up a bit of confidence at the start and we learn a couple of words and we think oh this is easy this is good but once you realize how much you don't know in French it's it can be very very overwhelming for you and that's normal I experienced that at the start as well but

what helped me was building out my own learning plan that actually worked okay a learning plan where I knew that week on week I was getting better maybe day on day I didn't feel like I was getting better but you know that's okay you can't feel on top of the world every single day but what you can do is make sure that you continue that momentum going even if you are having bad days overall I see that the French progress you know people say that it's like that it's like started beginner ended fluent and your

mind goes out it's just like that but it's not it's not up and to the right it goes like this right it goes like that so when you're at the peak of here you're feeling like oh I'm doing so great and then it dips down and you're feeling o I don't know what's going on here but once you go back up it takes maybe you know it could take 3 days it could take a week maybe even you know no I would say a week a week is maximum if you're feeling bad for a week

of learning French that's something where okay that's the maximum like you you've got to fix something you have to address something otherwise it's going to get way worse it shouldn't last for longer than a week you know a period where you're not really feeling confident in how you're progressing with French and if you're ever going to achieve your goals and you need to make sure that you get out of that slump you may be watching this video and you've been in a slump for a bit longer than a week that's a problem comment down below

if you need assistance on that and I'd say you absolutely do if you're trying to understand spoken French you're trying to read French you're trying to learn grammar rules and it's not working for you I've got lots of videos exactly why grammar rules do not help all my students were trying with grammar rules prior to Lear French and it's something where if you're trying to understand spoken French to eventually be able to speak French that's not going to work well for you so there's lots of things you need to get right with French overall just

to wrap up this video but something that you absolutely need to do is build a game plan know that it's going to work and then take action on it every single day like that's very simple but there's a lot that goes into building a good plan okay now if you're serious about learning French if you'd like to find out more you know exactly why um I help my students learn French how I do it go through my YouTube videos You'll see there's a full-step plan video that I've got that'll be helpful you'll see what it

looks like to learn French with me you can book in an application called if you're serious about learning French but keep in mind I reject most people simply because I don't have that much time okay just like everyone else I'm very busy and what that means is you know my oneon-one time that I give to each of my students it takes up a lot of my time so I can't accept everyone can only accept those who are really serious and show that okay you know I I know I can help them because they're ready to

do the work so if it sounds like you you can book in an application call in the description here it's on the description of all my other videos as well and yeah I look forward to speaking you if you do book in a call if not enjoy my videos keep watching through and yeah my videos will help you if you're serious about learning French okay have a good day