How do I Improve my French listening comprehension skills as a beginner learner?

We get it. You just started learning French for your TEF Canada or TCF Canada journey. It’s been two to three months, and you are in the A1-A2 phase of your French learning. You recognize short sentences and can read pretty well, but your confidence drops when it comes to listening. You are unable to catch pronunciations, and different accents, such as African, Quebecoise, and others, make it even harder. Not to mention the dreaded French liaison.  

To clear your TEF Canada or TCF Canada examination, you need to get a CLB 7 score in all 4 modules, including Listening (Compréhension Orale) and you wonder how you would be able to achieve this colossal task. Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada are also not kind enough to give you an exemption in any one module, thus you need CLB7 in all 4 in the same sitting. 

My first response: Do not worry. Your story is not new, not unique. Every non-native French learner before you has faced the same issue. As a result, we have prior knowledge that we can use and build on their experience, using their journey to improve our learning paths. How do we do that – well read on…

The first thing you need to understand is to appreciate the difference between Passive French Listening and Active French Listening. 

Passive Listening…

Is when you passively listen to a topic, like music or a podcast, your attention span is shorter as you are not trying to retain some information to be used later. This is good for training your ears to catch French sounds but not an exam-oriented approach. One can get distracted easily here. 

• Resources: YouTube Channels, Spotify, Apple Music, French news channels, Netflix 

When to use it: When you multitask, such as while driving, traveling, cooking, or performing les tâches ménagères, as the French call them. 

Active Listening…

Active listening is when you listen attentively to solve a problem. After the listening activity, you have to remember the information you got to answer questions stated afterward. This is a more involved approach and ultimately comes in the exam. 

• Resources: TV5 Monde, RFI 

To improve your French listening comprehension, you should listen to French actively for at least 30 minutes a day. Podcasts and Music (passive French) do not count. For 30 minutes you should sit at a place and listen actively. Listening can improve your Speech and your reading too because you can pronounce the words and also acquire additional vocab as you read the transcript. 

Active Listening should be done in 3 steps at a beginner level:

1. Step 1: 1st Listen: Try and see if you catch familiar words and understand the summary of the topic presented
2. Step 2: 2nd Listen: Try and improve on 1st listening and focus on a few things that you didn’t catch. 
3. Step 3: 3rd Listen: Open the transcript and read as you listen. Mark the words you could not identify, find their meanings, and finally get the overall gist of the recording. 

Practice these 3 steps daily for 30 minutes at least and I am certain that in about a month you will tremendously improve your French listening skills. For any activity, there is always a learning curve. Things get better over time but the most important part is: you have to practice daily.