Higher French: How to improve listening and reading

Hello, I am doing Higher French and i want to know any methods to improve the reading and listening part of the exam.

I have heard that reading french newspapers are a good idea but can anyone give examples.

Also, where can i get listening practice apart from past papers, maybe lstening to french radio or schloar, can anybody give someexamples?

Well here it goes, i'm sure you were expecting a reply from me.

Reading

There are a few methods which aid in improving your reading abilities. We say that practice makes perfect - this rule applies to french reading.

The more past papers you go through - [ translating words you don't understand as you go ] then the wider your vocabulary will become and the faster you'll be able to do the questions.

So past papers , in my opinion, are your first port of call. Newspapers are for some extra practice - try read them, again translating and noting as you go.

I feel that it's important to develop a method to doing your reading papers. ( Many people read the whole thing and then do the questions ). My personal method, would be to look at the 1st question and then read the allocated parts for the question, and answer them that way.


Listening

Most difficult part of the examination, and coincidently also the most difficult part of the course to improve on.

Again, practice papers/scholar is your first port of all as you'll develop different methods, improve vocabulary etc.

The BBC website has a section called " Ma France " which i found helpful. I'd stick on the french subtitles and watch the videos ! That way i was hearing what all of these words sounded like, spoken by a variety of different actors.

You could also find youtube videos of news podcasts etc, i think sky also has a french TV channel ( you have to pay for it though ) that might be of some use, as your visually seeing what they're talking about...


Hope that's of some use,

Good luck.

Adam

I am currently only doing Standard Grade French, any advice on Speaking, Reading, Listening?

Dunno if they do them at your level, but Letts Revision guides come with Audio CDs with Listening and Speaking activities on them, and have activities involving all 4 (Listening, Reading, Writing, Speaking) in the book (the audio goes with questions in the book). Anyone who comes across this thread and is doing GCSE French, German and I think they do Spanish, get it. It really Helps!

Would it be relevant to the course because Higher and GCSE's are quite different, anyway, do you have the title of the book or the IBSN?

I am currently only doing Standard Grade French, any advice on Speaking, Reading, Listening?

Hello, I am doing Higher French and i want to know any methods to improve the reading and listening part of the exam.

I have heard that reading french newspapers are a good idea but can anyone give examples.

Also, where can i get listening practice apart from past papers, maybe lstening to french radio or schloar, can anybody give someexamples?

I am currently only doing Standard Grade French, any advice on Speaking, Reading, Listening?

Reading

As others have said past papers are good although they are very limited and are actually quite simple (too simple in my opinion). To really improve your French I would suggest reading French newspapers such as "Le figaro" which can be found online. Obviously you won't understand most of what they are saying but if you get the gist of it then it is a start. I also recommend wordreference.com as a online dictionary mainly because it provides you with set phrases and colloquialisms.

Listening

As for listening I would say that they best way is practice and if you can get your hands on a native speaker then that would really be the best thing. I'd recommend having a look at Alliance Francaise. If there isn't an Alliance Francaise in your town but there is a university then I would suggest that you do some research and try and find out if your local university has language classes with native speakers.

If you wanted to listen to French music then I would suggest that you do so with the lyrics (paroles) on the screen on youtube. Really if you want to gain some kind of fluency in a language you must spend a large portion of your day dedicated to language study (much more than the hours of teaching you get in class), or even better spend time in a French speaking country or make some French speaking friends to practice with.

Reading french newspapers: how often do you think i should do it , because i have so much homework that i dont have time , so im planning to allocate time in the week to do this?

Try not to translate though. That's the worst mistake when learning a language. If you don't know the meaning of a word, don't translate it to english, look for a french definition.

Looking for a french definition is essentialy the same thing as the english one! The french definition IS the english definition.

le chocholat = ( french ) = Chocolate ( french? - english )

That's quite misleading advice

Sorry if i've picked you up wrong

Perhaps you meant, try not to translate every word? If so i agree.

Underline words you think are key to revealing the answer and use your knowledge ( use your english really ) to work it out.

Yes yes, sorry, I didn't explain myself properly. What I meant is that, if you find a verb for example, don't look for the translation but read what it means, explained in french, so you actually learn more words and how to use it in a context.
Unless you are aiming for a translation career, learning a language is not (just) about knowing words in a different language.

Thanks a lot, I am currently doing 3 hours of French a week to try and gain a grade 1, could you just confirm how the grading works? If I were to get a 1 in Writing and Speaking, but a 2 in Reading and Listening, would that work out as an overall 1?