I’ve blogged before about Radio France International, and in particular their Apprendre (Learn French) section. I attribute my (albeit very quotidian) fluency almost entirely to this service—or at least to the way in which I make use of it.

It all began a few years ago when I was in the middle of my first longish stint living in Paris, and was bemoaning to an American friend that my French was not improving as much as I had hoped.  My friend told me that when she had first arrived a few years earlier, she had heard of a method (I forget its name) which works by training the ear to better understand French by playing a recording of someone speaking over and over again for several hours per week. So she had dutifully gone to this company, parted with quite a lot of money, put the headphones on, and sat there for a few hours a week. When I asked her what the recording was, she said it was mainly Le Petit Prince.

 Now I love Le Petit Prince, and have ever since I read it in my year 12 French class a million years ago, but I couldn’t see how listening to the same thing over and over would be:  a) very interesting, and b) would not be more efficacious if one listened to a variety of things, changing them every few days perhaps.

 I promptly went to FNAC and bought myself a tiny radio and headphones, and began listening to several of the Paris radio stations. I remember one of them—France Info—simply being news bulletins over and over, which was very good as I began to learn many new words over the course of a few periods of listening. The station France Culture was also interesting, with extended discussions on various topics.

I found that even if I did not understand much of the radio program (which happened for the first few weeks, and even later if I was tired or distracted), by the time I arrived at work and had to use a very mundane level of French for greetings and fairly routine things, I could understand everyone much better. Clearly this was something to do with my ear being ‘trained’ to be more receptive to French.

Back in Australia of course, I could not get access to the French radio stations. This drove me to the Radio France International website, to see what they had in podcast versions, and then I found their Apprendre section which is a treasure-house of learning experiences.  I love the daily Français Facile. This is a 10 minute news podcast, with a transcript so that one can even follow the text while listening. There used to be two Français Faciles each day until M. Sarkozy cut back the funding (the radio staff were on strike for weeks, and the Apprendre section was the hardest hit—a very dark period for me indeed!). But then they came back with one per day, and which I regard as pure gold.

There are several other types of podcast I use regularly from the Apprendre section of RFI, all in MP3 format.

Les mots de l’actualité : This is a short daily segment on a word taken out of the news bulletins and explained, its origins traced, and so on. The presenter, Yvan Amar calls this : une chronique pétillante qui éclaire en deux minutes un mot ou une expression entendue dans l’actualité  (‘a sparkling column which in two minutes throws light on a word or expression from current events’).

Today’s word is le deluge. These podcasts usually lasts 1-3 minutes, and also have a transcript listeners may read.

 My absolute favourite is La Danse des Mots, also presented by Yvan Amar. There are about  3-4 per week of these programs (some are repeats from the last year or so), each lasting about 20 minutes.

 Yvan Amar describes his program thus : Le français sur Internet, l’évolution de l’orthographe, le Camfranglais qu’on parle au Cameroun, et même ailleurs, l’explosion de la littérature francophone tout autour du monde. Des sujets qui montrent bien l’intérêt extrêmement sensible que l’on porte aujourd’hui à nos façons de parler.  S’interroger sur la langue n’est pas seulement une curiosité aiguë : c’est un révélateur du monde où nous vivons. (French on the internet, the evolution of spelling, Camfranglais, which they speak in the Camerouns, and even elsewhere, the explosion of French literaure all around the world : these subjects are well placed to show us the very noticeable interest that there is today in our ways of speaking. To interrogate the subject of language is not only a matter of keen curiosity : it’s revealing of the world in which we live.)

Rather than trying to describe the particular subject matter of this program, I suggest readers check it out themselves by looking at the range of recent programmes in the Danse des Mots archives. Depending on the type of cell phone you use, I think it’s possible to download the podcasts directly, but as my cell phone is rather last-century, I download the MP3s onto my computer and then transfer them with a cord connected to my iPod equivalent.

When I’m out, I always have my iPod with me, and listen while walking to and from work and while walking around during the day (so I clock up about half an hour of listening there), while riding on public transport, and also when I have to wait in doctors’ surgeries, or wait for any other purpose. All this exposure to French, just fitted into the spare moments in my day!

I’m certain all this listening I do is the reason I’m able to avoid my level of French going ‘backwards’ in the 6-9 month periods when I have to be back in Australia.