How to Improve Your French

For those of us who are unable to live in Paris all year round, our misery at missing Paris is compounded by frustration in knowing our French language skills will inevitably decline in the months of absence. But there are some things we can do to reduce the impact of being out of our French bain linguistique; I call them my daily petites douches linguistiques.   I began to develop the ideas for these douches linguistiques when I spent seven months in France recently. Before arriving in Paris, I had thought my French was quite reasonable — I could ask for most of my everyday needs. But if people responded to me in their normal rapid French I was often left flummoxed, or asking them Voulez-vous repeter plus lentement, s’il vous plait.   Then a friend told me how her comprehension had been improved by a method of ‘retraining the ear’ to become more attuned to French, since English and French use different sound frequencies, or so the method claimed. My friend’s training, which took place in Paris, involved attending a centre and listening to French via headphones for at least two hours a week. I wondered if I could achieve similar results by simply buying a small radio with headphones from FNAC and listening to this during my several hours of walking each week. One visit to FNAC later, and I was ready to put it to the test.  The stations I found most useful were France Info (105.5 FM) and France Cultur (93.5 FM). At first I didn’t understand a great deal, but if they were talking about something in which I was particularly interested, I found I concentrated a lot more and this boosted my comprehension. Because the news bulletins are often repeated, France Info gave me more opportunity for comprehension. Even if I didn’t seem to understand a great deal, when I arrived at work and took off my headphones the ordinary French conversation of my colleagues suddenly seemed much more understandable to me.   Of course, before acquiring my little balladeur from FNAC, I had played the radio in my flat, and also the television; but it is just too easy to lose concentration when media is used in this background way. Once I began using the balladeur every time I went outside, with the little ecouteurs firmly lodged in my ears, I could simply turn up the volume if I found my concentration wandering.  When I returned to Australia I wondered how I could continue my listening. Fortunately Radio France has a most comprehensive website (http://www.rfi.fr/), and with media convergence nowadays, we can listen via our computers to many of the radio programs broadcast in France, no matter where in the world we happen to be.   Many programs can also be downloaded onto an ipod or other mp3 player and, voilà, one can continue the ‘ear training’ while walking the dog, taking the train to work, or any other activity that doesn’t require one’s full attention. There are downloadable émissions on a wide range of topics, ranging from one minute up to twenty and beyond.    Radio France even has a page dedicated to the learning of French: http://www.rfi.fr/lffr/statique s/accueil_apprendre.asp This is excellent for aspiring Francophones, with programs to listen to, along with questionnaires to aid comprehension. My current favourite items on this page are the downloadable twice-daily news bulletins (at 09:30 and 21:30) called Le journal en français facile, each one of approximately ten minutes’ duration. I download two each evening, and retain about a week’s worth of bulletins on my ipod, deleting the oldest ones every few days.   Another very useful item on this site is Les mots de l’actualité—words used in the news. These few-minute segments explain at length a particular term heard in the news each day, and are accompanied by a written text which is useful to read while or after listening. Recent words featured include: armistice, état d’urgence.   I mentioned my listening activities to a (Paris-based) friend recently, saying, ‘Oh but I know my French won’t be nearly as good as if I’d stayed in France.’ He said I shouldn’t be too sure of that, and reminded me that a central psychological belief, first articulated by William James, is that ‘we learn to skate in summer after having commenced in winter. …Like the soil, mind is fertilized while it lies fallow…’*  Since I’m due to return to Paris in a few weeks, I’ll soon be able to report on the efficacy of Radio France as the mind’s fertilizer!   *This is from John Dewey’s Art as Experience (1934), in which he quotes William James.  Carolyne Lee teaches Media and Communications at the University of Melbourne; her latest book is Power Prose: Writing Skills for the Media Age.