Do you get any French-language TV where you are, with closed captions? I found this enormously helpful in Montreal. I read French well, but between the accents and my lousy hearing, I don’t pick up spoken French that well. I bet if I could watch closed-captioned TV for a month, I’d be a sight better than I am today.
It is very tough IME to hear correctly what’s being said over little speakers on a TV or over the internet – it’s a lot different than being in a real conversation where you can get some visual cues and have a fuller audio spectrum.
I +1 to using subtitles, or audiobooks (where you can follow along in the book). Lots of very good actors in France recorded audiobooks – I think I have on cassette still Andre’ du Soleil (sp? famous actor) doing one of Proust’s volumes of Recherche – The Prisoner IIRC – and it was not only fun to pass the time on the subway or in the park while eating lunch – but helped me when I was just on Proust for the first time and my literary French wasn’t so good. Probably lots of similar books.
If I may, Bernard Heidsieck has a terrific book – full text, with audio CDs – called (excuse lack of accents) Respirations et breves rencontres. I learned a bunch from that, when I was still learning literary French, and it’s totally conversational and well-performed. FWIW, Heidsieck is probably the most eminent “sound poet” in France since the 1950s or so. Brilliant, and well-worth checking out – it’s not fancy poetry – it’s just little imaginary conversations between him and famous poets from all sorts of countries, including anglophonia.
Even though I’m a near-native speaker, a lot of the slang from movies from the 1950s or before just fly right by me, or I just can’t hear it well enough to get more than the gist. Easy to get discouraged. To my credit, I did type out the French from “Rififi” and “Inglourious Basterds,” but it took me a long time and I had to use headphones.
je ne sais quoi.
Seriously, let us know how you go.
Well, I joined LiveMocha to review its French lessons. These appear to be okay, and the tradeoff there is that you correct people’s English lessons in return for having people correct your lessons. Not a bad deal really.
But… I’ve already gotten three spammy messages from other LiveMocha users, messages displaying a suspicious amount of conversational intimacy. (Seriously, no-one real on the Internet starts out by professing undying love to someone based on their ‘wonderful’ profile… a profile I haven’t yet filled out!)
I’ve gotten similar messages lately on Facebook. An alleged beautiful young Frenchwoman messaged me, but when I looked at her info, she had a phone number in Ivory Coast! I put my picture out there and don’t hide my age, so people know what they’re getting–and it’s not someone who’d attract a beautiful young woman.