How to get better at understanding French one-to-one 

Listening one-to-one in French can be hard work when you are starting out, but there are ways to make it easier. Here are some strategies I have found helpful.

Create opportunities to listen

Firstly, do not wait until you have to talk. It is essential to talk to bank managers, estate agents and doctors, but you may be too nervous to concentrate on how to improve your listening when there is important business at stake.

Instead, set up social situations in which you want to talk: invite a neighbour over for tea or try a little chitchat with the supermarket cashier – if the shop is not too busy.

Secondly, it helps to take the initiative. Start and direct the conversation yourself, even if you are shy or hesitant.

If you make the opening gambit, typically by asking a question, you control the subject from the outset so you can guess a lot of the vocabulary that will come back at you.

Ask about someone’s job and you will already have an idea of what they are going to tell you. Ideally, choose a subject that you know a lot about – chess, tennis – and you will probably find the jargon is the same as in English, but with a French accent.

Make conversation easier

Before you do anything, however, get yourself in the right mental state. If you feel inadequate either confess it to whoever you are talking to, or act confident.

Do not assume the other person is more comfortable in a given situation than you, just because they are a fluent speaker.

It is not always possible but, whenever you can, create the optimal conditions for yourself before you get into conversation. Obviously, this is not always easy but often you can ask someone to relocate to give communication a better chance.

Get away from crowded rooms and switch off your phones. Suggest you both sit down. Do whatever it takes to make things easier for yourself.

This is also a way of making sure the other person pays attention to you, because there is nothing harder than trying to understand someone who is only half concentrating and not choosing their words with care.

Practise active listening

Whenever you do talk, make sure you are truly present. I call this “active listening”. You will do yourself a lot of favours by being sensitive to body language, facial expressions and gestures.

Non-verbal communication is a complementary way of making sense of the information you are receiving. Be alert, and you will notice when and why your “ear” goes off in the wrong direction: I will discuss the various traps awaiting the listener in the next article.

Often it helps to forget what you were taught. The other person may or may not speak with perfect grammar or pronunciation.

Chances are they will pepper their remarks with abbreviations, slang terms, synonyms or other words that you are not expecting, and run words together however they want.

If you don’t understand something, don’t be afraid to ask for an explanation but wait for a suitable gap in the conversation.

You don’t want to interrupt the other person’s flow; but neither do you want to let a discourse based on an important word you don’t understand go on too long.

Language is also culture

Finally, know that conversation is about more than language.

It is also about culture. You will probably find that whoever you are talking to refers to cultural information – songs, celebrities, cartoons, adverts – that you are unfamiliar with.

The more you learn about French society and its shared points of reference, the better will be your comprehension skills.