Listening trainer: understand French
Ten short listening tasks per round — slow or normal speed.
Listening closely helps you speak.
Listening trainer
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.
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.
Good to know
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.
What happens in a round?
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.
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.
Why practise slowly?
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.
Where do the voices come from?
First, speech generated in advance by this website plays. Where there is no file for it, your browser speaks with its own voices — and switches between them, because words heard from many voices are easier to recognise later. These are not recordings of real speakers, and nothing plays unless you press a button.
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.