I'd like to practice my listening skills, any suggestion on interesting french/swiss/canadian podcasts? Ideally those designed specifically for practicing french, in the sense that pronunciation is a bit more clear.

The translation of Sleeping Beauty in French is “La belle au bois dormant”

Should it not be “dormantE”?

What is dormant referring to if not “La Belle”?

Edit: Je comprends maintenant. Merci à tout le monde

Hello!

I’d like to share my recent experience taking the TCF Canada exam in Toronto. A bit about my background: I studied French for two and a half years between 2018 and 2020, attending group classes for around 200 hours during that time. However, I should note that these group classes had 15 people, which limited participation, etc. Still, they helped me learn the basics of French, enabling me to read most texts and understand a large part of conversations.

In February, I decided I wanted to take the French exam to earn extra points for my immigration process to Canada. As for why I chose the TCF over the TEF, to be honest, I simply followed my private teacher's advice, so I can’t provide further reasoning.

In February, I began taking weekly French classes, one hour each, specifically to prepare for the exam. At first, I could barely remember what I had learned, and it was tough to express myself. With my teacher, we started by focusing on the writing part, while I worked on the reading and listening sections independently. We’d try to speak a bit at the beginning of each class.

This process continued until about June: one hour of private class per week, homework for different parts of the writing section, followed by 15 minutes of daily reading in French, and about 1.5 hours of listening practice weekly while running or going to the gym.

Starting in June, I became convinced that I wanted to take the test before the end of the year. So, it was crucial for me to set a concrete exam date: October. This led me to create a personalized weekly plan outlining how many hours I needed to dedicate to each section of the exam.

Since my strengths were listening and reading (thanks to YouTube videos), I focused exclusively on writing and speaking, leaving those other two sections for the final month before the exam.

In June, I began taking two one-hour classes per week, working on different writing exercises on my own and reviewing them in class. I also used ChatGPT to spot frequent errors and make improvements. In the last two months, I entered a more intense study phase: completing two full sections of the writing part per week, doing at least one oral and reading section test per week, and starting to work on the speaking section. In terms of resources, I borrowed some books from the library, watched YouTube videos, and in the last two weeks, I took various practice tests from TV5 Monde.

As I said, my weakest parts were writing and speaking. I concentrated on those instead of the other sections where I felt more comfortable. During the final month, I took two hours of individual classes per week, read for 30 minutes daily, completed two sections each of the writing and speaking parts weekly, and did two tests each for the oral and reading sections.

I ended up scoring C2 in reading comprehension, C1 in listening comprehension, B2 in written expression, and C1 in spoken expression. Here are my tips:

Listening Comprehension: The exam starts with this section. I recommend listening to as many French resources as possible: podcasts, music, movies, etc. Try to fully immerse yourself in the language, think in French, listen to different accents, take TV5 Monde exams, and watch YouTube videos. Keep in mind that the last questions score the most points, so pay as much attention as possible. My teacher mentioned that the answers don’t usually contain the exact words used in the conversation. My biggest issue was getting distracted by external factors during the test. I scored 520/699.

Reading Comprehension: Definitely the easiest section, and you can go back and forth while taking it. Read in French, change your phone settings to French, and read complex texts in that language. In my case, I found the questions quite difficult. I had 18 minutes left, so I went back to review uncertain answers and even changed some. I scored 646/699.

Written Expression: This was by far the part I worked on the most. You only have 1 hour, so it’s essential to practice at home to complete the three tasks in 50 minutes, leaving 10 minutes to review. Usually, 10 minutes are recommended for the first task, 20 for the second, and the rest for the third. In my opinion, the topics tend to be similar (housing, travel, city activities, environment), and most of the time, you can learn words or expressions that apply to all situations. It’s crucial to use advanced-level expressions. With the main body prepared, you only need to add information, ensuring the text structure is solid. I scored 13/20.

Speaking Expression: This part worried me the most. The first section is an introduction. I prepared it beforehand, knowing what to say about my education, work, family, activities, and aspirations. I started with a monologue, but within 5 seconds, the examiner interrupted me with a question about my family, which allowed me to continue, but I couldn’t speak for two minutes straight without being interrupted. At one point, I paused, and she asked about my work, showing that all topics are interrelated. The second part is a role-play, with two minutes to prepare and three and a half to execute. My topic wasn’t easy; I had to ask the building manager for information. I got through it because I had practiced similar themes, like renting a home. The third part is the hardest. You’re given a topic and need to express yourself. I received a topic I wasn’t familiar with, so after expressing myself correctly at first, I ended up repeating arguments in different words but completed the task without interruption. I thought I’d score a 9 or 10, but I ended up with a 14/20.

I wish you all the best in your journey, and I hope these tips help!

Hello everyone, I am currently in Paris enrolled in a night school to learn French and I got so tired of the flash cards apps and other language learning applications.

Because either the UI sucks and makes you hate the learning experience and slow and laggy or you got apps like Duolingo where it is fun to do, but it takes so long to build a vocabulary pack because the app is designed/gamified in a way to keep you subscribed and paying.

So I learned that the most common 2000 words of most of the languages teach you 80-90% of the language. So I built myself an app that teaches you 2000 of the most common words.

(I actually initially did this for French and posted on r/French, it got so many good reviews that I turned it into a full-fledged application.)

Here is the link: https://getvocabia.com/

P.S. After the most common 500 words, there is a paywall. It is a one-time fee. I am also trying to make money from this by giving you value, I don’t wanna lie to you but, I will always keep the first 500 words for any language free.

P.S. #2 — here is the initial French 2000 words list, (it is badly coded but still the full 2000 words with conjugations are free so if you would want that it is here: https://demirantay.github.io/flashcards-FR/

Please give me feedback, (this account is new because the link has my name on it)

Why is it: “c'est intéressant de lire le livre” if there is no “de” in “il ne sait pas où aller”?

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I've been studying French for some time now, having taken classes in France, online tutoring, and Duolingo. I'm enjoying Duolingo at the moment because it's repetitive and gives me lots of practice for basic grammar, vocab, phrases, etc. I just completed Duo's A1 unit. Probably A2 intermediate, though, because I've been to France many times, and can understand and speak more, but not B1 yet!

This summer, I thought about taking a French course in Quebec City. What kind of effect will that have on my learning French other than the positives of learning French? Is the accent different enough? I ask because when my children were studying French in grammar school, one of their teachers learned French in Canada, and her accent was markedly different. My kids had other French teachers in their school career, one of whom was from France, so I don't think it made any difference to them.

Anyway, just asking, and please don't bash me for asking. I'm not downgrading Quebecois, but as a new learner, I don't want to get confused about things. My last teacher in France said I had a really, really good accent, and I don't want to lose that. One of my son's teachers was from Marseille and he told me once that Parisians always made fun of his 'dialect'!

« Moi, prendre quelqu'un pour m'aider? Oh non. non. je n'ai besoin de personne ! Je vérifie moi-même tous les devoirs de ma fille et de mes fils, je fais le ménage, je fais les courses pour tout l'immeuble, j'arrose l'ordinateur, je répare le chien, je descends la voisine et c'est très bien comme ça ! »

Bonjour! Is there an app where I can text people in french?

I'm not sure there'll be an exact parallel, but say in English someone is asking how your trip was. You can break up your response like this, "Ahhh, the weather was very bad, unfortunately, but food-wise it was amazing!" It kind of means, "in this category of things." Do the french have an equivalent?

I've studied French at school for 3 years but our education is pretty abismal so I can only string together some simple sentences. I need to improve my French since my native language is effectively useless outisde my country and I want something other than English to make working and studying abroad in the future easier.

I'm looking for a textboox to work through over the next few months to learn or go over rules and expand my vocab. Preferably something with excersises to practice.

Price isn't an issue since I may accidentally download it for free off the internet. I plan to pair this with listening, reading, speaking and writing to improve my French.

J'avais deux copines de province mais ça faisait un peu léger quand 1nême pour sortir. Parce que les gens sur Paris euh ... sortent par bandes d'amis et restent avec leurs amis, que ce soit dans les cafés, dans les restaurants ou ailleurs. ils restent avec leurs amis.

Je me demandais si l'on pouvait utiliser deux verbes avec un seul sujet. Exemple : J'ai recherché mais n'ai pas trouvé. Exemple 2 : J'ai remarqué et ai apprécié [...]

Hi all,

So this is how things went with my french language learning. I started excited and worked on my french for a month . Basically listening, reading and writing.

But after a month, when I came across to French people, they speak so fast . I cannot understand a thing and I switch immediately to English. I didn't even make any effort to try to understand. I know that I will not be able to comprehend what they just said .

My question is : why people speak so fast ? Why they cut words ? How am I suppose to learn when people speak so fast and cannot understand a thing ?

So I have slowly lost motivation and I would like to ask people how they handle this ? How to handle that they speak so fast ?

Au bar du club-house, c'est l'heure de l'apéro. Tout est fait pour rendre les rencontres le plus naturelles possible.

Au bar du club-house, c'est l'heure de l'apéro. Tout est fait pour rendre les rencontres le plus naturelles que possible.

Bonjour à tous 👋

I'm a language learner currently building a word of the day app (iOS and Android) to learn over 30 languages (including French 🇫🇷)!

Once a day, the app sends you a push notification with a new word in your target language. Opening the push notification, you can find translations for the words, example sentences, and more! You can customize the languages, frequency, and word difficulty to meet your learning style.

I'm currently testing it out with language learners, and I would love to get feedback on the idea! There is also a waitlist on the website to be informed when it goes live!

👉 http://www.vocaboftheday.com

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts and suggestions!

Hello, I’ve started learning French for one week and came across a Frenchman recently and started talking about it. He told me I would never sound like them no matter what…it was an odd interaction. I was very motivated and happy while learning but now I feel foolish and kind of down after hearing him say this. How would you deal with this? Is it true?

For context, I don't believe there's a single source that could help you better than a teacher, but additional to my studies, I've looked up additional resourses that could help me and I've been fortunate enough to be able to pay for a lot of resources to try them out first for a few weeks before I made a decision.

Therefore, these are, in my opinion, the best options; free and the ones worth the money.

• Overall Courses

I've done a lot of research on these, and my shortlist was: Inner French, Français avec Pierre (note: he even has free courses for beginner and intermediate, short, but useful to test them), and Perlez-vous French.

In the end, I've decided to go with Inner French, I did a review a while back so I won't go much into it, but basically I decided to go to Hugo because I found his approach to be better for learning real-life French.

My second option was Perlez-vous French, and I believe this and Pierre are better for a more academic approach. Perlez-vous French's courses are also accredited for vocational training for those who need a language certification to get a job in France, and Pierre has a degree for teaching FLE.

• Grammar

Honestly, Kwiziq is the most comprehesive online source for learning grammar and you can clearly see a human has built the lessons and I find their use of AI to suggest you lessons very efficient.

For a more book approach but also as comprehesive and way cheaper - Lingolia.

• Listening

TV5 and RFI are the best sources to do listening exercises. They're the main source to create and provide content for all FLE textbooks used by all language schools.

Plus, TV5 also has: [1] TV5 Monde Plus with free movies, shows and documentaries; [2] Bibliothèque numerique with a lot of classics; [3] Dictionnaire des francophones where you can look up what meaning a word has in different regions or look up an expression and see its meaning and where it's used.

• Reading

For graded readers I highly recommend the books from Eli Publishing. They also come with audios and exercises.

• Apps

Honestly, there's only Frantastique that I'd really recommend; the price however is not it for what they offer, but it is indeed, in my opinion, the app that delivers quality. There's a reason why Le Monde has decided to buy the company and continue to develop it and all reputable language schools recommend it as an autonomous option to advance your studies.

Just like Kwiziq, they also use AI to deliver lessons based on your responses and level, but what they do more, they give you addional exercises in your lessons for your errors and use space repetition for vocabulary.

There are many websites that offer 1-2 months to try it for free, you can just google it. Just an FYI, the basic subscription does not let you review all the grammar points and vocabulary you have learned, so you really have to pay for the premium to actually get the most of it. 🙃

For a more commercial option, Babbel is the only other one that I liked, just because they also have dedicated lessons for grammar and vocabulary.

• Conversations

Here, Babbel Live is an unbeatable one, besides a private tutor that builds lessons just for you and your needs of course. They have quality teachers, the lessons are well built, and the price is the best part considering it comes with unlimited classes + the app.

For writing, I found Claude AI to be a bit better when it comes to corrections than ChatGPT, but I've learned many times that AI cannot be a reliable resource all the time for more complex situations or if you're looking to learn a bit more of a natural way of writing. I believe here a tutor that corrects you and gives you suggestions for how a natural speech would be is the only viable solution.

Why is it “Il sent” and not “Il sentit” if “sentir” is an -ir verb?

For example: “finir” is “il finit” and not “il fin”

Is it just irregular?

hello there, i made a post before and created a small discord server.

we chat, share our days, post random questions and recently started to write short stories/essays too.

we have a few of native speakers there to help us too.

i am looking for 5 more people to include, anyone over A1 is welcome.

please reach out only if you are a talkative person/ who is going to be active in the group. otherwise we ban passive participants.

you can reach out via dm with a little introduction.

thank you!

For example, I came across this sentence; "je souhaite ne pas en aimer," which I think means, 'I wish I didn't like them.'

I would have written it as, "Je souhaite que je n'en aime pas." Would that be correct? Maybe it just sounds clunky? I'm so confused about this construction, when it should be used and why.

Hello All,

I have two related issues here. Firstly, even for the same content, streaming services provide different audio and subs depending on your location, so it's hard to find anything.

Secondly even if you do find content (in your country) for your chosen series that has French audio and subs, there's a chance that the subs won't match the audio exactly because it's not 'CC'.

I'm at the stage where I really need to bump up my listening skills and just tune my ear to hearing spoken french regularly. Due to my learning style, audio only (podcasts) won't cut it so I need video and it's quite important that I can view subtitles.

Can anyone recommend a series or children's series (for simpler language) that is available on Amazon Prime or Netflix where there are is French audio and French Subs 'CC'?

I was actually enjoying the animated childrens series 'Llama Llama' on netflix but as I said, the subs wouldnt always match up.

Anyone else having the same problem? Thanks.

Hi how are you? I'm french and I would like to practice my english. I'm looking for a friend to chat with and if you want I can help you with french. 😊

I bought a 2 year plan that I no longer use and am looking to transfer it over to anyone willing to take it; plan runs until june 2025; for 30CAD a month (I got it on discount.)

Please let me know, and I can cc you to frantastique support and transfer over the subscription.

As the title says, I'd love to hear your recommendations.

I personally like
- Cyprien (Youtube & Apple skechtes are fully subbed, not sure about the rest)
- Mr V (Les Jones video is fully subbed)
- Golden Moustache Suricate (all their videos are subbed as far as I can tell)

Please list your favorites french content creators down below, it really helps o/

Highly recommend to anyone who’s looking for something new to watch. Medieval high fantasies are great for exposing you to vocab that’ll help you consume history in French as well.

That’s all, just wanted to share a gem I found. Happy French learning everyone!!