How to improve my listening skills in French?

French, a Romance language of the Indo-European family finds its roots in the Vulgar Latin of the Roman Empire. It evolved from Gallo-Romance, the Latin spoken in Gaul, and more specifically in Northern Gaul. Today, owing to France’s past overseas expansion, there are numerous French-based creole languages, most notably Haitian Creole. A French-speaking person or nation may be referred to as Francophone in both English and French. French is an official language in 29 countries across multiple continents, most of which are members of the Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie (OIF), a community of 84 countries that share the official use or teaching of French. French is also one of six official languages used in the United Nations. It is spoken as a first language (in descending order of the number of speakers) in France; Canada (provinces of Quebec, Ontario and New Brunswick as well as other Francophone regions); Belgium (Wallonia and the Brussels-Capital Region); western Switzerland (Romandy—all or part of the cantons of Bern, Fribourg, Geneva, Jura, Neuchâtel, Vaud, Valais); Monaco; parts of Luxembourg; parts of the United States (the states of Louisiana, Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont); northwestern Italy (autonomous region of Aosta Valley); and various communities elsewhere. French is the second most taught foreign language in the EU. All institutions of the EU use French as a working language along with English and German; in certain institutions, French is the sole working language (e.g. at the Court of Justice of the European Union). French is also the 18th most natively spoken language in the world, the 6th most spoken language by a total number of speakers and the second or third most studied language worldwide (with about 120 million current learners). As a result of French and Belgian colonialism from the 16th century onward, the French was introduced to new territories in the Americas, Africa and Asia. Most second-language speakers reside in Francophone Africa, in particular Gabon, Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Mauritius, Senegal and Ivory Coast.

Listening

Actively listening to, as many relevant audio resources you find – online, in libraries, repeatedly until the pronunciation, the accent, the pitch, the tone and the speed gets embedded in your subconscious. It is not possible to speak a language if you cannot identify the words being spoken. So this is an important step towards your primary goal of speaking Italian. This will help you train your ear, identify spoken words and get you ‘in tune’ with the speech. After multiple listening episodes, take the transcript of the audio clip and read along maintaining the same pronunciation, accent, pitch, tone and speed. You could listen to Podcasts, News, Audiobooks, Italian songs, Talk Shows, Documentaries and much more!

News in slow French, LearninyourcarFrench, Don’tspeakFrench.com, RocketFrench 101languagesFrench, FluentUFrench, Forvo, AudioFrench.com, languageguide.org, Listenlive.eu, RadioCanada, Literatureaudio.com, YouTube videos, Spotify Italian playlists are a few of the top valuable, effective and interesting audio language learning programs that will catapult your learning!

French is estimated to have about 76 million native speakers; about 235 million daily, fluent speakers and another 77–110 million secondary speakers who speak it as a second language to varying degrees of proficiency, mainly in Africa.  French has a long history as an international language of literature and scientific standards and is a primary or second language of many international organisations including the United Nations, the European Union, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the World Trade Organization, the International Olympic Committee, and the International Committee of the Red Cross. In 2011, Bloomberg Businessweek ranked French the third most useful language for business, after English and Standard Mandarin Chinese.

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