Listening trainer: understand French
Ten short tasks per round: recognise a word, hear the gap in a sentence, find the stressed syllable, tell two similar sounds apart, follow a dialogue. You decide when something plays — and whether slowly or at normal speed.
Listening closely helps you speak.
Listening trainer
Read along shows the text with every task straight away. Good for tuning in; answers then do not count, because it is no longer a listening test.
Or practise one thing
There is no word-stress exercise here: in French the stress does not sit on a particular syllable of the word but at the end of the phrase.
Why in small steps
Listening to a new language means recognising sounds first, then where words begin and end, then the meaning. The trainer practises these steps one by one — and together in the mixed round. Feedback comes at once, so your ear learns what made the difference.
Slow is not a step back
At the start, a slower speed demonstrably helps understanding. Feel free to hear a task twice, slowly first and then at normal speed: the goal is normal speed, but the way there can be slow.
Why different voices
If you hear words from many speakers, you later recognise them from strangers too. So the trainer switches between the voices your browser has for the language. They are speech-output voices, not recordings, and nothing plays unless you press a button.
Without sound or with hearing loss
Every task has a “Show text” button, and the “Read along” switch always shows the text. Everything works from the keyboard: Tab to the buttons, digits for the answers, Enter to go on.
Example sentences
A1 Aujourd’hui il fait beau.Today the weather is fine.
A1 Mon sac est lourd.My bag is heavy.
A2 J’ai invité les voisins.I invited the neighbours.
A2 Vous pouvez l’emballer ? C’est un cadeau.Can you wrap it up? It is a present.
B1 L’année universitaire se termine en juin.The academic year ends in June.
B1 Ça fait mal quand j’avale.It hurts when I swallow.
B2 L’énoncé tient en trois lignes.The wording of the task runs to three lines.
B2 Il a mal prononcé le nom de la rue.He mispronounced the name of the street.
C1 L’exploitation par chambres et piliers laisse du minerai en place.Room-and-pillar mining leaves ore in the ground.
C1 On sort du port avec le jusant.You leave harbour on the ebb tide.
C2 Le mélanome se reconnaît à son asymétrie.A melanoma is known by how uneven it is.
C2 L’alerte au tsunami a été levée dans la nuit.The tsunami warning was lifted during the night.