My French is good — so why do I not understand when the French speak to one another?

If you have been learning French for a while, you will have noticed that there is a big difference between the classroom and real life. 

While French lessons include audios that are generally slower and clearer, conversations between the French happen fast, with slang and idioms mixed in.

Even the difference between French spoken directly to you, and a French conversation happening between native speakers, can result in starkly different comprehension levels.

One American on a Facebook group for expats in France wrote the following on July 15:

"As an American who speaks French decently well, I have an extraordinarily hard time understanding them when they speak to each other, even though I understand them pretty well when they’re speaking to me directly in French. 

“It’s like my comprehension drops from 95%+ to less than 50% from when they speak to me versus when they speak to each other. This really limits my ability to meaningfully participate in group conversations."

To understand why this happens — as well as how to tackle the issue — The Connexion spoke with Celtina Masardo, a former French teacher and founder of the French language programme S.L.Immersion. 

Understanding the conversation gap

Trouble understanding natural conversations in French — not to mention participating in them — is a very common situation, Ms Masardo said.

She pointed to a few factors making everyday conversations harder to understand.

First of all, key vocabulary and the speaker's pace is sped up when they are talking to other francophones. As a result, many words sound different when speaking quickly and informally. For example, je suis becomes 'chuis and je sais becomes 'chais.

Then, there is the rhythm issue. Ms Masardo said she has observed that the timing of when English speakers pause and add to the conversation is different from the French.

"Sometimes, it can be difficult for English speakers to know when they can respond or contribute to the conversation," said Ms Masardo, whose language programme offers homestays where students can live in their French teacher's home. 

Add to that the time it takes to translate a phrase from English into French before saying it, and it becomes even harder to contribute to a French conversation before the subject changes.

Different regional accents, slang words and idiomatic expressions also increase the difficulty of understanding conversations between the French.

Bridging the divide

A plateau in your language learning journey can seem frustrating, but solutions exist.

Through her immersion programmes, Ms Masardo said students spend the morning taking a tailored language course, then go on an outing with their teacher where they can call upon what they learned in the lesson and use it in a natural, conversational setting.

Through online courses, professors help students memorise a list of phrases useful to them in conversation.

"The idea is that we try to develop automatic responses, making them as natural as possible," Ms Masardo said.

Intuition is also key. With so many rules and exceptions to keep in mind, rather than memorise them all, it can be easier to be so immersed in the language that you start to intuitively know how to structure a phrase.

"I have always told my students to try to feel the French language," Ms Masardo said.

This approach relates to researcher Stephen Krashen's Comprehensible Input Hypothesis on language learning, developed in the 1980s. He posited that we acquire a language better by listening, reading and understanding its messages, rather than just rote memorisation of grammar and vocabulary.

Applying this method can also happen through leisure. One training technique Ms Masardo recommended was to watch a French show with French subtitles. As you watch, note useful phrases and words in a notepad. Then, practise reading them out loud so when the time comes to use them in conversation, you can articulate the phrases well.

She also recommended the French public television network TV5MONDE, which offers free language lessons through watching videos of music, news shows and other media.

In a blog post, online French school Ohlala French Course suggested improving comprehension by listening for recurring sound signals and keywords rather than trying to understand everything in a conversation.

For example, the site notes that en fait signals a clarification, while alors du coup means an explanation is coming. Tu vois ? is a way for the other person to check you are following. 

Understanding a conversation between two French people may take more effort than a five minute Duolingo session, but there are success stories to be found.

Ms Masardo recalled that one of her students, a middle-aged Swiss-German man, was trying to learn French with lists of vocabulary and their German translations. Ms Masardo encouraged him to let go of the foreign translations and instead try to define each word with other French words, or with drawings.

It was a technique that "really helped him break through," she said, and he ended up graduating to a superior language level in one week.

"As much as possible, we try to think in French and rely 100% on the language," she said.