I’ve started a new collection in the French library and will be adding many more lessons over the coming weeks.
They are shortish (most are 3 mins long) monologues by journalist Yvan Amar from Radio France Internationale (an excellent resource for French learners), explaining in some detail a French word or phrase which has usually been taken from a recent news event. I find them excellent to listen to, particularly as the narrator’s style is very relaxed and informal, and he seems to be ad libbing completely rather than working from the script (which RFI provides). This may explain why there are some (minor) discrepancies between the audio and the text. However, I don’t find this a problem; on the contrary, it makes you notice the differences while you’re listening, which may well aid retention.
I have shared about 20 of these podcasts today. I will aim to add in 10 a day on average. As there are over 1,000 of them in total this project will take 3 months or so !
I will also be adding in the new podcasts, as they are published (usually 3 or 4 per week), so the collection remains up to date.
Thanks to Marianne, who helped me with approaching RFI for permission to use their content. Marianne started the ball rolling with them a couple of years ago, but their emails were a bit ambiguous as to whether we could use some of their material. Now I have a very kind, and definitive, response from them that we can use ALL the material on their site ! Good news indeed !
I’d be grateful for you reviews. Happy listening !
Oh, I am very happy to know this news because there are plenty of personal materials such as “Le Journal en français facile” in my import section. Now we can share all the materials, I think. Is it right?
What a kind and concise answer! The woman who authorized me to use the podcasts of Radio Emilia-Romagna had so many questions and doubts, but she eventually gave me the permission to share them. There are already two of them in the library. Check my profile for the link to the collection.
The 2010 collection for “Les mots de l’actualité” is now complete and available in the library - 129 lessons in total.
I will begin the 2011 collection as soon as the new podcasts become available on the RFI site. I will also start on the backlog from previous years; as there are so many of them this will obviously take some time to complete, but I will share the lessons as soon as I create them.
I’ve set the level of all of them to Advanced 1, which seems about right for these podcasts. I find the best way to approach studying them is just to “dip into” the collection from time to time, selecting lessons that seem vaguely interesting. This works better (for me anyway) than a concerted effort to study them all… there are just too many of them and you can get overwhelmed rather quickly and so lose interest.
The 2009 collection for “Les mots de l’actualité” is now complete and available in the library. The following collections in this series are now available:
Les mots de l’actualité (2009) - 215 lessons
Les mots de l’actualité (2010) - 131 lessons
Les mots de l’actualité (2011) - 12 lessons (ongoing)
They are in reverse chronological order, so you always get the most recent first.
As I said above, I find the best way to study them is to just skim through the collections and pick lessons that you like the look of, rather than working through them methodically. They are a maximum of 3 mins long (some are shorter) so are good little “fillers” when you just fancy a change from what you’re currently working on.
I have created a 2008 collection and will add/share podcasts from this year when I am able.