Any advice for listening?

Hi all,
I an doing A-level french but I am really bad at listening. We have these stupid machines and their maximum volume is still quiet.
Could anyone give me any advice on how to improve in the listening?
Do you think that having a tutor would help? How about an on-line tutor?

Any tips at all would be much appreciated!!

Regards,

Alice_G

Reply 1

Manatee

14

How about listening to French radio or watching French TV, if you can get access to it? I'm sure that news clips etc. are available to download on the Internet, though I don't have any specific websites to hand.

Another fairly painless (and entertaining) way to improve listening is to watch films - if you get them on DVD, you may have the option of turning on subtitles, which can be helpful, at least to start with! Alternatively, even DVDs which are not French sometimes have French soundtrack options. A library might be a good place to start.

Good luck! :smile:

Reply 2

Loz2402

Alice_G

We have these stupid machines and their maximum volume is still quiet.

for my exam, we use our own walkmen for the exam. this is just my exam board then?

Reply 3

kellywood_5

17

Loz2402

for my exam, we use our own walkmen for the exam. this is just my exam board then?

We can use our own walkmans if we want, but for AS we all just used the ones provided by the school because there was nothing wrong with them.

Reply 4

Juneau

2

http://jt.france2.fr/

This would be a good start I think. It was suggested to me by our french assistant at school. I only watch the 8 o'clock news one as to be honest the other ones are just too long for me to concentrate on (the morning one is 12 minutes).

Hope its of help.

Reply 5

leannemarie

11

kellywood_5

We can use our own walkmans if we want, but for AS we all just used the ones provided by the school because there was nothing wrong with them.

Does anyone use computers for their listening? They help a lot because you can rewind much quicker and bookmark certain places as well.

Reply 6

Juneau

2

leannemann

Does anyone use computers for their listening? They help a lot because you can rewind much quicker and bookmark certain places as well.

Computers? I take it you do your listenings with CD's then? How do you bookmark places; sounds pretty good to me. We just use tape players that have counters on them so you can set it to zero at the beginning of the piece and then know how far you need to rewind to listen to it all again or get back to a specific place you wanted to go back to.

Reply 7

Loz2402

Juneau

Computers? I take it you do your listenings with CD's then? How do you bookmark places; sounds pretty good to me. We just use tape players that have counters on them so you can set it to zero at the beginning of the piece and then know how far you need to rewind to listen to it all again or get back to a specific place you wanted to go back to.

i just use trial and error to see where i need to rewind too lol.
i wish they would release CDs though, tapes annoy me. but i suppose they want to make it so that you can rewind back to middle of tracks and not the whole way through...

Reply 8

leannemarie

11

Loz2402

i just use trial and error to see where i need to rewind too lol.
i wish they would release CDs though, tapes annoy me. but i suppose they want to make it so that you can rewind back to middle of tracks and not the whole way through...

I do it on a computer where the listening material has been digitised so that it is like listening to song on media player. Only the programme is called Divace and you just click a button when you want there to be a bookmark.