You love everyday life stories,
You are curious about culture and life in France,
You want to improve your understanding of French?
— Oui ?
From beginner level (A2) to advanced level (C1/C2), this is what these podcasts in French will offer you to live.
& Cultivate Your French (Slow French)
A bientôt,
Laetitia
The positive effects of both these podcasts
One Thing In A French Day or Cultivate Your French (Slow French) are very useful tools to work on your French listening comprehension and to understand spoken French, but they have more positive effects !
Let me tell you why.
Those two podcasts are different than podcasts focused on learning a language, they are not built as lessons, but their effects on your French might be as good as lessons !
The podcast episodes are based on my daily life and the encounters I make : there are no phrases from a textbook, there are no made-up situations.
The first positive effect is, of course, listening comprehension.
When you learn French or need to keep up with your French, at one point, your first goal is to master listening, because listening is the key to the 3 other basics Language learning skills : speaking, reading and writing.
At first, I think it can be quite difficult if you're not used to listening to French. But little by little, naturally, your ear will get used to the way I speak. Your brain's first reflex will be to try to understand what I'm saying. To do this, I make sure that the episodes are not too long, especially for Cultivate Your French (Slow French), because I know that requires a lot of concentration. At the very beginning, you'll manage to catch a few words, then from episode to episode a few sentences, then understand a good part of what I'm telling you.
And then it's really great, because you'll be listening to the episodes more for what I'm saying than to understand what I'm saying. It's a nice nuance, isn't it?
This oral comprehension will come naturally because you'll get used to the way I speak, both my pronunciation, but also the words I use and the sentences I construct.
It works
Yes, I have proof that it works because the podcast One Thing In A French Day has been around since 2006, Cultivate Your French (Slow French) has been around for many years too and I've had lots of testimonials from listeners who've written to me.
In one survey, 98% of listeners who responded felt that their understanding had improved since listening to the podcast.
❝I have been listening to this podcast for four years. When I began listening, I didn't understand very much though I enjoyed hearing the french. I had to read the podcast in order to understand it. Four years later, I find that I understand most of the podcasts the first time I hear it.❞ CLL73 , 01/20/2021
❝Once my French improves enough so that I could actually grasp a bit of what Laetitia was saying, I began to really love this podcast. I still try to listen twice without the transcript, then listen while reading the transcript to figure out all the words I’ve never seen/heard before (of which there as so many!), and finally listen again to try to hear and understand it all at normal French conversational speed. SO helpful!❞ SlowReaderLiz , 02/25/2020
Discovering French life and vocabulary in context
On the podcast, I share with you everyday adventures and interviews I conduct with professionals who tell us about their trade or their passion.
Transport yourself to France
So the podcast covers many aspects of life in France, but always in the context of real life or real encounters. The podcast is not artificial. So it's an opportunity for you to discover vocabulary and expressions in context, not just in a lesson.
It's also important for me to tell you what made me laugh, so humour will always be present on the podcast.
Last but not least, as you understand what is being said, you get the amazing sensation of being transported to France. The photos that you get with the transcript (Cultivate Your French and One Thing In A French Day with notes) will enhance this amazing feeling.
comprehension, sounds, pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar
Whether it's Cultivate Your French (Slow French) or One Thing In A French Day, you can use them without the transcript. This will be very effective in improving your comprehension naturally.
But you can also choose to take your French to the next level and receive the transcript by subscribing.
There are advantages that we don't always realise, but they are real.
The transcript and its many undeniable advantages
The transcript gives you the control
on your French learning needs
when you study French on your own.
First of all, you have the transcript: you receive it by email, you can copy it to a file, print it, etc. . So you can use it several times, come back to it, use it in different ways.
You have the text as it was written, thought out and cut out. So you have the sentences with the breaks in the right places and the punctuation I chose.
You also have the text with the correct spelling and verbal agreements, and that's no mean feat!
The transcript is a very useful tool to enjoy many ways of working with the text. This way improve your listening skills.
You can choose to listen without reading and then read. So you start by putting yourself in a situation of pure listening, just like in real life.
If you are not too confident, read the text and listen to the audio at the same time.Look up the words that you don’t understand. Then, let your brain work by itself for a few hours or days and listen to the audio again without the text..
If you want to improve your comprehension gradually, then it might be a good idea to read the text first, and then listen to the audio without the text.
If you want to see how much of the audio you understand or if your comprehension skills are pretty good, then try and enjoy the audio directly. Only read the text afterwards, to check a few points.
And after that?
It’s time to train your brain.
After, you could read the text aloud. And why not read it aloud several times? This way your brain can actually hear you speak French! You improve your pronunciation and, by speaking and hearing yourself at the same time, you also start to actually feel how the sentences are built. With this approach, next time you will listen to the audio files, the structure of the sentences will sound natural to you.
What else could you do?
— Mimicking
— Vocabulary lists
— Revise basic grammar rules : the podcast episodes contain direct applications of any basic grammar rules (A1--> B2)
— A powerful exercice to progress is to copy sentences : drawers and musicians work this way, the result is better than inventing sentences and inventing is taking the risk to get into bad habits.
— Build your own sentence book
The transcript with notes and photos
In the notes that come with the transcript, I give you some key explanations for a better understanding of the text when needed, I also share with you interesting links.
But what I like the most is to highlight 3 sentences, verbs or expressions that are very natural in French. Sometimes, you might not even notice them because they are easy to understand, but they are part of what make a sentence sounds true. Of course, I give you some examples of how to use them. I usually do this one or two times a week.
When it’s possible, I also share with some photos ! I know they complete the text and that you enjoy them. It also gives you the feeling of being transported to France.
The notes don’t always follow the same pattern, when something inspires me I like to focus on a particular sentence or the use of a tense.
✨ The notes are not constructed like a lesson, it's different, but just as effective. They are notes, a way for me to draw your attention to something I find useful for your experience.
1/ One Thing In A French Day TEXT ONLY : https://bit.ly/46OhsNB
2/ One Thing In A French Day TEXT&NOTES : https://bit.ly/3RQsCgN
3/ Cultivate Your French SLOW FRENCH : https://bit.ly/3QcVBZV
How I Create My Podcasts
The podcast has existed since November 2006, over 18 years, with nearly 2,500 episodes published.
The Constraints
When I created it, I had very strong material constraints: a one-year-old baby (Micaela), a job (in publishing), and days that were too short. These constraints have only persisted, even eighteen years later: I'm married, I have three daughters, an intense sporting activity, I love reading, and going out in Paris. These constraints gave me a framework for the podcast: a short format, based on my daily life so I wouldn't have to invent content, a rhythm of three times a week to allow me to offer several anecdotes. It's this format that gave the podcast its title: telling one thing from my day.
Writing Day by Day
From the beginning, I've been writing day by day. I choose my topics from what happened to me a few days before or sometimes the same day. It's not always very comfortable and a bit risky, but that's what makes it an adventure. It's also what gives the podcast its personality, this logbook feel, because the podcast literally follows my life, the seasons, my travels, my encounters. I think this is why the podcast is in perpetual renewal: it's the way I look at my daily life that offers me topics. The podcast is not artificial in any way; I don't invent.
Writing: An Essential Asset
Spontaneously, you might think that the fact that episodes are written and then recorded distances them from the natural side of spoken French. After all, a living language is mostly spoken, rather than written.
In reality, writing is almost the main asset of this podcast. An essential asset for learning French. Writing is essential on several levels. First, I take great care with my sentences and their syntax: there are short sentences, long sentences, simple sentences, complex sentences, sentences with complicated tenses, all kinds of sentences. There are also parts of dialogues, which allow me to report conversations.
Oral French is very interesting, but the syntax is very different orally, and it is more interesting to know how to construct a sentence correctly to speak, express your opinion, or tell a story that happened to you, than to learn from sentences from spontaneous speech.
Finally, the writing is not artificial; these are not textbook sentences. Yes, textbook sentences can also have their charm, their interest, but one should not limit oneself to encountering them, because their contexts are limited. You progress a lot and quickly by noticing how sentences are constructed, how vocabulary is used in context. And so, you progress well by listening to well-written sentences. You progress in oral comprehension, but also in sentence patterns that become instinctive through being heard repeatedly.
You need to be inspired and copy to learn.
Encounters with People Who Live in France
For several years now, I have also been sharing my encounters with you in the form of interviews. These are people I contact because I want to meet them. I prepare my interviews based on questions I have about their activity or their approach. I meet them in person, I go to their workplace or to a café.
I think the encounters, in the form of interviews, bring a lot to listeners because they allow them to meet people they would not have known otherwise, who live or work in France, but also to hear people other than me speak and thus get their ears used to different ways of speaking, formulations, or rhythms. So it's enriching in many ways. And, on my side, I love meeting people. Even though I am convinced that listening to the same person speak often is extremely beneficial for then understanding others. A lot of work is already done, and the surplus of adaptation is less significant for your brain.
The Transcript and Notes That Are Not Lessons
I am not a French teacher (fortunately) and therefore the notes that accompany the transcript are not lessons. However, French is the language in which I live, in which I think, in which I write, and what I find interesting is to show you what is natural or useful for you as a learner. This is the approach that drives the transcript notes and which means that there are often useful phrases taken from the text and given as examples.
And I really like the idea of playing with French: that's why there are often suggestions for exercises to do with the podcast text. The summer period is often an opportunity to play guessing games around monuments or historical figures. The notes are a living complement to a more formal course, to grammar lessons, to formatted things. This makes learning more "lively" when learning alone.
Slow French
Many listeners of One Thing In a French Day have told me that the beginnings were difficult, that they couldn't understand, but that little by little their understanding improved and they now measure their progress. However, I think some others have thrown in the towel, that it's too fast, too difficult at the beginning, and that it can be off-putting and discouraging. That's why I created a Slow French version of the podcast: Cultivate Your French.
Once a week, I present an episode in Slow French. In Cultivate Your French episodes, I read the text a first time slowly and then you hear it at normal speed. This means that in the same episode, you can decipher the text, understand the words, and then hear the normal speed version. I record both versions myself.
In no way do I keep you in an artificial bubble of Slow comprehension. The idea of possible progress in comprehension is there right away. Slow is not just slow French, it's a state of mind, we take our time, we're not in a race to learn. With one episode per week, we give ourselves a dose of French, we discover things around the subject being treated, we open up perspectives, we find new learning goals, we renew our enthusiasm for the language and culture.
I write and record the podcasts myself.
Laurence qui tient la crêperie Crêpes & gourmandises
Nabil Wakin, journaliste au journal Le Monde, Paris.
Augustin Denous, fromager à Boulogne Billancourt
