Practice your French listening with my sister (real spoken French)
- Elsa
- Apr 29
- 2 min read
In this video, my sister Inès spends the day with me.
It’s a simple vlog… but it’s also a great way to practice your French listening.
👉 You’ll hear us speaking at a normal, natural speed
👉 with the kind of French people actually use in real life
Not textbook French.
Real, everyday, informal French.
🎥 Watch the video
Was this video challenging?
If you found it difficult to follow… that’s completely normal.
In fact, this is one of the most common experiences for French learners.
👉 You understand clear, learner-friendly French but struggle with real conversations
This is what I call the comprehension gap.
The gap between:
“learner French” (clear, slower, structured)
and real spoken French (faster, reduced, more informal)
I explain this in more detail here: 👉 How to understand fast spoken French
Why does real French feel so different?
Because when French people speak…
👉 They don’t speak the way you learned in class
They:
speak faster
articulate less
simplify words and sounds
use more informal structures
So even if you know the vocabulary…
👉 It can feel like a completely different language
🎯 Your listening challenge
Now that you’ve watched the video, try this:
👉 Watch it again and try to spot these 3 really common patterns of spoken French
1. Dropping “ne” in negatives
In spoken French, we almost always remove “ne”:
Je ne sais pas → Je sais pas
Il n’a pas de chance → Il a pas de chance
2. Sounds disappear
When we speak, we often “eat” sounds:
Tu as envie → T’as envie
Il y a un chien → Y a un chien
Il faut cuisiner → Faut cuisiner
Je veux un café → J’veux un café
3. Words get shortened
We love to make words shorter:
Le petit déjeuner → Le p’tit déj’
Un restaurant → Un resto
Le cinéma → Le ciné
Don’t worry if you don’t catch everything.
👉 The goal is not to understand 100% but to start noticing how French really sounds
Want to go further?
If you want to train your ear and finally feel comfortable understanding real spoken French…
That’s exactly what I focus on in Master French Comprehension.
Inside the course, you:
work with real conversations (like this one)
learn to recognize patterns of spoken French
and gradually get used to fast, natural speech
So instead of feeling lost… You start to understand what you hear.
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