Podcast language practice

What
are you listening to? Well this is me practicing French using another podcast, and this is one of my favorite ways to study because I can listen to new podcasts and get new ideas while practicing my French. Today I am going to explain to you how I do this
exercise and the way that this exercise helps my French. Let’s get started.

When
I choose a podcast for this exercise I look for a podcast that comes from a natural French speaker and a podcast that uses a French that is a little faster than the French that I speak. When I push play sometimes I listen to the episode one time before speaking.
The second time I repeat everything that I can hear and understand. When I first started doing this exercise I whispered everything I heard in French, because I could not hear the podcast very well when I was speaking in my normal voice. But I have been doing
this exercise for more than a half year, so usually I can now speak and repeat in my normal voice while I listen to a new episode.

If I lose the meaning of the podcast and I cannot understand
what the podcast is saying, I will stop speaking for about 5 seconds. This allows my brain to understand the meaning again, and once I understand what the podcast is saying I start speaking again.

If
you really cannot understand the podcast most language podcasts come with a transcript. A transcript is a document that has all the words of the podcast written, so if you are really lost and you do not understand the words you can get a transcript and read
at the same time as you listen. This will help you understand sentences you find difficult and you can also use the transcript to learn new vocabulary that you didn’t know before.

I really like repeating podcasts when I practice French
because it helps my French in 3 ways. First, repeating a podcast makes me speak faster. It makes me more fluent when I speak French. The podcast speaks faster than me so as I listen I pay attention to say the words more quickly than I am comfortable saying
them. Over time this makes me a quicker speaker of French.

A
second way this exercise helps me is by improving my pronunciation. When I listen to a native French speaker and then I repeat, I notice that sometimes my words do not sound the same, especially vowel sounds. I usually listen to the same podcast 3 or 4 times
and this allows me to change my pronunciation on the second and third and fourth times that I repeat the episode. Over time, my pronunciation has really improved.

The
third way this exercise helps me is by improving my listening comprehension. Not only am I listening to a native French speaker that is speaking a little bit quickly but I am doing 2 things at the same time. I am speaking and listening. Do you remember dictations
at school? I think this exercise is like doing a mental dictation -a dictation without writing- because I am not just repeating sounds. I am repeating sentences that I understand. When I listen to a podcast I can imagine a transcript of the words the podcast
is saying and this helps me repeat the words. So when you do this exercise at home, try to imagine a running transcript of the podcast you are listening to and you will be doing a mental dictation.

I
hope you like this way of practicing French and that you try it too.