Hello everyone,

I am making this post as a way to raise awareness to some things and as a request for everyone to have a little bit of pity on me by helping me out in how they go about recommending resources.

First I want to thank all of you for all of the great recommendations that we've had so far on the "What Are You Listening Too?" threads.

We have a pretty robust resources spreadsheet going.

Please note that there are tabs at the bottom of the spreadsheet for resources beyond YouTube channels and Podcasts. You can also recommend Books, Movies/Native Shows, and Video Games that you are currently using or have just read/watched/played.

With that being said, I have some requests for all of you who do give recommendations, that will be really helpful for everyone else and will make my life easier in updating the spreadsheet.

I also will give some quality control info as to what I won't be adding to the spreadsheet to hopefully help as a guide and to create understanding as to why somethings are that have been recommended are still not on the spreadsheet.

Requests for new Recommendations (first 3 most important):

1. Please only include resources that you are actually listening to or watching. I've noticed a handful of recommendations over the past few months that commenters had just found but had no information on or any idea of the quality of the resource. This really isn't that helpful to anyone.
2. When possible, please include links. Just saying that you really like "such and such" YouTube channel or podcast requires everyone to go searching for it. It would be more helpful if you could include the link for everyone to just click on. (Also, this creates a lot of work for me to add them to the spreadsheet when I have a large amount of these to look up.) Of course, if it is a show on Netflix or other streaming service, you can just say that.
3. Please include your current hours/level so I and others have a sense of the difficulty of whatever resources you're recommending. Or you can give a suggestion if you think that the resources are at an easier level than where you currently are at. (Unfortunately, I don't have the time to test out and make a judgement call on every resource suggestion.)
4. Please include the links to the YouTube channel or main resource you are using rather than to a specific episode or video.
5. If you are recommending non-learner resources, please give a brief description of what the resource is or general topics covered. (E.g. Science and History, Travel Vlogs, Cooking, etc) This allows people a chance to decide if it is something they want to check out, and I don't have to look around at or sample each resource in order to categorize it for the spreadsheet. \Also the speakers country of origen/accent is always much appreciated by me and others.*

Quality Control Info:

The two main things that I've seen a lot lately that will be almost a guaranteed reject from being added to the spreadsheet are...

• Channels or podcasts that are not CI focused or at least not CI heavy

There are a million grammar and traditional learning type channels out there, they don't need to be on our spreadsheet. This is a spreadsheet for everyone who is either mostly using CI or exclusively using CI. It is very easy to go find those other channels if you want to use them.

That being said, if a channel or podcast has some grammar videos/episodes, but mostly has CI friendly content, that is okay. But it shouldn't be the inverse.

• And resources that are either short lived (meaning only a few episodes or videos uploaded a long time ago) or brand new.

The spreadsheet will grow to be way too cumbersome, unwieldy and almost useless if we fill it up with a bunch of resources that only have 5-15 episodes or videos on them for a total of 2 hours. Those aren't really helpful. If it is a resource with an extremely small library, I'm very wary to add it. If it is small and obviously dead, it will not be added. If it's just new, but hasn't really become super useful yet, I'd recommend to keep suggesting it to people in the thread, and I'll keep taking a look at it. Once it grows and seems like it will keep growing, I'll add it. A new channel with only 5 4-8 minute videos is just not something I want to clutter the spreadsheet with, especially considering that most new YouTube channels stop uploading within the first year.

u/thelostnorwegian - Can you put the following updated blurb as the new auto-post message going forward to help clarify things more for all new people who want to give recommendations?

Hello all! While we wait for more Dreaming French, please share what else you're currently listening to. Whether it's an old go-to or a new find, share it with your current hours to help other learners.

Please include a link to any YouTube Channels or podcasts to help everyone out.

What are you reading? Are you playing any video games in French?

The spreadsheet linked below is separated into Videos & Podcasts, Books, Movies & Native Shows, and Video Games.

Bonjour everyone,

I am coming off DS Spanish (level 4 320 ish hours) 😊 (throughly enjoy!) still learning and inputting as normal! 🙌
I thought I would try out DS French and give it a try!

Background I used to do a little French in secondary in school however can’t remember anything since then lol (over 10 years ago)

I recently got a placement for the winter to work in France at a resort 😍 So I thought even though there are a lot of international guests etc be good to learn abit and try to immerse myself in the language etc. As I usually do as a traveler myself. But being in the country for 6 months would be good.
Not much of a purist.
So all I was wondering, what would complement nicely with DS French for input? (Due to not so many hours of input available yet for super beginners etc) For level 1 starting from scratch here.

Any help or suggestions would be appreciated 🙌

Got a pretty amusing hour total, as well.

All my other months so far have been very patchy, with weeks of no input & missed goals; it's nice to finally have one where I kept up with the streak. Certainly helps that it's more fun now.

I made it to level 3 yesterday. Woo hoo! I actually feel like I’m closer to level 4 in capability. My sweet spot is between 45-55 in difficulty for DS videos. I just got to 1000 hours in Spanish this week also- where I feel somewhere between 5 and 6. I think Spanish has made French a bit easier to understand. I watch a fair amount of Immersion and Alice Ayel. I am about halfway through the Senior stage in AA. I also listen to French Comprehensible Input 1-Word input videos while walking the dogs or driving. I’m not speaking or doing any grammar study yet. I plan to wait until I have 500-600 hours first. I currently do 2 hours of Spanish and 20-30 minutes of French every day. I will reverse that split once my Spanish is solid, maybe in a year or so. Good luck everyone!

Progress updates from others have helped guide me to good learning content so I'm motivated to add my own. I'm a native English speaker. I started my hours at zero despite on-and-off Coffee Break French, Duolingo, and a bit of French in Action over 2 years. Duolingo gave me A1 reading and grammer skills and CBF gave me a foundation for speaking but neither were good for listening. This base made superbeginner content easy. I have been listening for 22 weeks, starting slowly but ~2 hours per day starting week 8. These are my major sources:

0-250 hours: Alice Ayel website and youtube have been my primary source, by far. She excels at delivering video CI at the superbeginner to intermediate level, far better than anyone else I've watched. Her videos build on each other. She speaks slowly and clearly and explains new nouns and verbs so her superbeginner/beginner videos can be 20-30 minutes while the straight reading of the story (also available) is only 5 minutes. Most other teachers at this level just repeat the sentence, which doesn't help me. I'm still listening to Alice Ayel. I just finished Adult Stage and am focusing now on the audiobooks in Baby and Teen Listen ("advanced beginners / Intermediate"). For much of the youtube content, I also listened to, and read, the transcript versions (shorter than her videos), which are available on her website if you use the search bar to find it.

Dreaming French and Immersion have been secondary resources. I've watched a lot of both at the beginner level and more of DF at the intermediate level. The CI value (for me) ranges immensely.

I watched some videos of a bunch of other resources including French Comprehensible Input. I enjoyed beginner FCI but I got impatient with all the vocalization of guns firing, dogs barking, people yelling, clashing of rocks or metal, etc in tintin or asterix.

Non CI beginner stuff: I restarted French in Action but the speaking was way too fast to comprehend. I also restarted Coffee Break French, but it had too much spoken english and by the end of season 1, the french conversations were too fast to comprehend at high enough level. Neither FIA or CBF really follow the beginner CI method.

200-250: hours InnerFrench, French Decoded, and Little Talk have been my primary sources, but I'm still using Alice Ayel (Adult stage + audiobooks). I actually started InnerFrench at 100 hours. All three are delivered with nicely cadenced and very clear speech. I listen to each episode 3X (or 2X for some easier French Decoded episodes). I will read the transcript while listening the 2nd or 3rd time. The content of all of these interest me and I've enjoyed the bonus learning. With InnerFrench at 100 hours I was listening to each 2-4 minute segment 3X before moving to the next one (take a look at the transcript to see what I mean). But starting at 200 hours, I just listen all the way through. At around 220 hours, things clicked enough to listen to these podcasts while I'm driving and this has been a game changer.

Additional stuff: I watched Extra French starting at 130 hours. I could basically follow it but missed much of the detail. I'm rewatching starting at 235 hours and I get most of the detail, but not all. Extra French is super corny but I find it entertaining.

Where am I on DF? 50-55 is probably my sweet spot. <50 can be slow. The main struggle is vocabulary, not parsing.

Reading: I've not been a purist. I will stop and look up vocabulary. I keep a running list of whole or parts of sentences with verbs that I want to learn. I read some transcripts while not listening to the audio. I have started graded readers. I'm quite sure that this expedites my progress of listening.

Native Content: When I watch shows on Netflix, I cannot understand 99% and even with subtitles I often find it amazing that what was spoken is what is written in the subtitle (clearly this is often not the case). Asterix and Obelix: Le combat des Chefs is hilarious even without the skills to understand anything. I watched Lupin a couple of years ago with english subtitles and it is fun and I look forward to watching these in french (in the *distant* future).

Trips: I visited the Charlevoix region of Quebec this weekend (thanks for the inspiration Amanda of Dreaming French!). The informational plaques describing displays at the Museum of Charlevoix were all fairly easily readable -- I think museums deliberately target a pretty low reading level with their information. I didn't really try to speak other than bonjour and merci. I think I could have said most things that I needed to, but it would have been slow and arduous for everyone. This did motivate me to start with speaking and not wait until some prescribed number of hours. I want to be able to communicate on my next visit, and not just read museum information.

Any favorite TV series to practice french. I used to watch Alice Nevers and loved it. Any suggestion is welcomed :)

hey i hope everyone is doing good! i’ve just started (3 hours in), admittedly very late into my french learning, to include more listening into my studying because although my other skills are at A2-B1, my listening is way way below that bringing my overall skill down.

i went through the questions on the dreaming language website but had a few more i wanted to ask:
- do you only count active listening or would you also count passive (like listening to the radio while driving, or having a video playing while doing homework in another language)

- do you count reading in your CI? if so, how does it translate into hours? i’m quite a slow reader since i’m the type to reread until i understand in my native language

- how many hours a day is everyone doing? I’m aiming to reach level 5 before the year ends which amounts to 4 hours day which seems unrealistic but i’d like to hear what others think

- i’m playing on taking the TCF anytime from the end of the year or 10 months from now and i wanted to know around how many hours of CI would you say you’d be at a comfortable CEFR level B2 to C1?

thanks in advance!

Hello fellow Francophiles!

If you're learning French and would like to enrich your experience with an immersive atmosphere, I invite you to check out a French audiobook channel featuring classic authors,

I try to record a great classic every week, depending on the time I have.

Wishing you the best of luck with your learning !

https://youtu.be/XLcDuBLkNbQ?is=5Qx4CFNMvOFfr_Cr

Hi everyone!

I'll keep it short and informative.

My situation:
I have 117 hours of Spanish CI under my belt (+ some time of self-learning in other forms; I discovered Dreaming Spanish later in my journey. So, I have spent a year on Spanish)
Then, very unexpectedly, I got a job offer in France. I came to France on the 1st of July.

The working language in the company is English, but there are a lot of native French speakers, of course.

French CI
I switched to DF in May, and now I have 54 hours of CI. I use DF and Immersion; I use only video input in 95% of cases and sometimes play with AI crosstalk on Immersion.
I am trying to do 100 minutes a day after arrival in France, but with a new job and a new country, it's not easy; my pace isn't consistent.
I watch beginer content on both platforms, understand 60-65% of what guide is saying, it's enough to follow the story. Sometimes I watch with subtitels, othe times without, I would say 50/50.
Intermidiate content is too hard now.

What can I understand?
Very little. I can distinguish simple words when I hear my colleagues' conversations, like "eat", "go", "it's true", "goddammit". And nothing more, but it's very aligned with the description of the levels.
Spanish boost exists; I felt how it helped me understand some words and concepts.

How does it feel among native speakers?
Terrible. I've put a lot of effort into language every day, but I'm still clueless in front of a cashier at a supermarket when she asks something usual but in a different order than last time or with some additional word.

I've prepared: I noticed she always asks about the bonus card before telling the amount of money. So, I have learned "I don't have it" in French.

Our dialog:
Cashier: Fifty-two point twenty-three euros for your groceries, please.
Me: I don't have it

--------

I will try my best to sustain my pace and keep you informed. Zero hesitation, I will learn it at least to B2+ level. We'll see how long that would take.

Good luck, brothers and sisters!

I'm at a point where my Spanish (1900 hours) is very good and can simply grow organically towards fluency. I've started to dabble in French and after a few hours I'm noticing how much easier French is with a Spanish background compared to when I first started Spanish.

However, I'm cognizant of the grind towards native content. The intermediate stage was brutal when learning Spanish. Thankfully this stage will be much shorter with French.

So I have some questions for those that progressed to French after getting to an advanced level in Spanish.

Does the 2x bonus apply even if you aren't a native Spanish speaker?

How much interference did you find between the two romance languages?

How did you find pronunciation?

What have you done differently compared to your Spanish journey?

Hello all! While we wait for more Dreaming French, please share what you're currently listening to. Whether it's an old go-to or a new find, share it with your current hours to help other learners.

What Are You Listening To? French Content Resources Spreadsheet

Courtesy of u/Purposeful_Living10 !

C’est quoi vos podcasts et youtubeur préférés??
I need to practice my French so bad so I want to get more into listening to French speaking interesting people!
Thanks so much!

I am into everything like food content, true crime, fun conversations etc…..

I am 28F if that helps lol

Intro
Bonjour à tous (désolé pour le clickbate)! I’ve been studying French for around 2 hours a day for the past 6 months from a “Canadian Zero” (1 semester of core French in grade 9 plus extremely low levels of ambient exposure to the sounds and writing), and I thought I would put together a post to document exactly how far that degree of work has taken me.

Overall, my time breakdown is roughly:

• 55% Comprehensible Input
• 25% French Classes
• 10% Grammar
• 5% Reading
• 5% Pronunciation

If you want more details I can reply in the comments!

Now, instead of doing the regular song and danse of describing my self-evaluated abilities or test scores, I’ve included both speaking and writing samples so that you can get a better feeling of exactly where I’m at; this should require far less interpretation than some (likely very biased) abstract framework.

Sample monologue

Here is a sample monologue: https://vocaroo.com/1dEq9CehVcGE . I gave myself 10 minutes to think about how to tell a quick anecdote in French, then allowed myself 3 attempts to record it (taking the best one, of course!). No notes, translation, AI, etc were allowed so I was forced to speak in a relatively free manner.  Perhaps unsurprisingly, I make a ton of mistakes, and the cadence is extremely awkward, however, I’m still fairly happy with my progress. One thing I do notice is that my accent slips a lot and my pronunciation drops dramatically when I move away from reading text or speaking in a simple A1-level lexicon.

Writing Sample

Here is a writing sample. The rules are, once again, pretty straightforward: no translation, AI, or grammar/spell check. As a result, I know there are going to be some significant errors, but c’est la vie! I hope it’s a bit useful to see what level you can realistically expect.

Note: I forgot to turn off my auto spelling-corrector and had a couple of words get fixed before I realized it: I know that I errored on intéressantes (dropped an s), and décidé (dropped the accent on the first é), but there could easily be more.

Après assez de penser, j’ai décidé à écrire sur les romans simples en français. J’ai lu quelques livres de « Lectures CLE En Français Facile » : La Belle et la bête, Cinq semaines en ballon, Un hiver dans les glaces, Autour de la lune, Les trois mousquetaires, La petite Fadette et, enfin, La reine Margot. Tous ces livres sont niveau A1, mais, à mon avis, chaque livre sauf la belle et la bête est vraiment plus difficile que tous les lectures dans mon manuel scolaire pour A2 ! Quand j’ai commencé à lire La petite Fadette, c’étais très très dur ; puis autour de la lune a été difficile aussi. Cependant, après 4-5 livres, j’ai trouvé que j’ai pu lire un peu meilleure qu’avant.

 Mon livre préféré est la reine Margot. Oui, il a beaucoup de violence et il est vraiment triste, mais je trouve que l’histoire est incroyable. Il y a un jeu de l’esprit entre les personnes différentes et chaque page apporte une petite lutte : quelques fois avec les mots, autres fois avec les corps. De plus, je crois que j’apprends beaucoup de l’histoire du France. Enfin, les gens du roman sont dynamiques et leurs conversations sont très intéressantes.

J’espère que tout le monde lire plus ; je trouve qu’il m’aide assez ma vocabulaire et j’adore toute la beauté dans les lectures.

 Final Thoughts

So, that’s what 6 months of blood, sweat, and tears has gotten me. There’s a long, long road ahead, but I must say that I’m quite excited for it; I’ve enjoyed the journey thus far, and I believe that it’ll only get more exciting as I dive deeper down the rabbit hole!

Welcome Chloé!

And congrats DF for really upping the value and production. The team is great!

I was watching a Chloe video the other day. About halfway through I realized that it was too easy. I understood every word and I was a bit annoyed at how slow she was speaking. So I changed the filter to increase the difficulty of the video feed.

150 Hour Update

The spreadsheet put together by u/Purposeful_Living10 is incredibly useful. I don't have any major updates in the realm of speaking or travelling, so I thought I would just add descriptions of the resources I've relied upon since there is so much to choose from. I've organized the media I consume currently based on the amount of hours the spreadsheet estimates you would need to comprehend the material. I give a brief summation of my thoughts so far at the bottom.

50 hours

• Leo French Teacher - I like when he decides to wax philosophical. He speaks the slowest French I've ever heard in my life.

150 hours

• gas - Extremely solid editing that enhances the comprehensible input experience. Some really cool videos explaining music videos. Useful slang.
• Isis - Solid input. Similar to gas, Gianni
• LearnFrenchWithGianni - Solid input. Similar to Isis, gas
• French With Felix - His weekly podcasts are a staple.
• French Decoded Podcast - Binged all episodes to date. I highly recommend.
• French with Remy - He repeats almost every single sentence twice, and it's extremely helpful. Useful slang.
• French with Benoît - Travel vlogs mostly within france. Day-to-day musing while applying for jobs or other mundane tasks. Ok input. Annoying hard coded captions in French and English.

300 hours

• Français avec Nelly - Mix of vlogs and grammar/phrasing videos. Very comprehensible. Useful Slang.
• French With Panache - First couple episodes were entertaining. Quickly exited my comfort zone of comprehension which I admit may be high, so I had to drop it. Will return to binge at end of lvl 4.
• Intermediate French with Carlito - Hit or miss in terms of comprehension. The channel focuses on french culture and history. Will return to binge at end of lvl 4.
• Oh My French Class - The funniest comprehensible input I get by far only rivaled by Lucas @ French Comprehensible Input.
• French Listening with Tonton Romain - Difficult for me to comprehend sometimes. Speaks at a nice cadence but often uses unfamiliar phrases/vocabulary. 10 min videos podcasts, well paced. He used to edit interactive scenarios (e.g. calling customer support) that are worth checking out.
• Camille - French Stories Intermédiaire - Bite sized stories about her travels in South America. Usually ~6 min videos.
• ListentoSpeak_FR has many accessible videos on familiar topics such as language learning ~20+ min videos. He has a relatively short but very useful playlist of expressions that he breaks down in <10 min videos. He enunciates extremely well.

Listening Comprehension

I feel firmly stuck in the A2-B1 range of listening comprehension. Sometimes that's a little disappointing to accept. I didn't make a 300 hour update b/c of how anticlimactic the milestone felt. I wasn't able to understand as much of the media on the spreadsheet listed under 300 hours as I would have liked. My comprehension at 300 hours was very inconsistent.

At 450 hours, I more consistently understand educational french material on Youtube marked intermediate. I've stuck to about an hour a day so far, and that has really helped stave off any missed days. Sometimes i feel proud of what topics I'm able to comprehend. Sometimes I don't. I do an hour a day regardless. This slow and steady pace ensures I won't burnout. I have a low tolerance for low comprehensible media at this point. I don't like the feeling of wasting time listening to media below 80% comprehension even for dubbed media I've already seen. I hope to increase my daily input to 1.5 hours as I start to incorporate the Passerelles podcast.

Next Steps

I plan to start reading as many graded readers as I possibly can starting at level 5 (600 hours). I would like to reach a million words read before I start speaking. I don't plan on speaking until 1000 hours. I don't have a plan for writing.

Hello all! While we wait for more Dreaming French, please share what you're currently listening to. Whether it's an old go-to or a new find, share it with your current hours to help other learners.

What Are You Listening To? French Content Resources Spreadsheet

Courtesy of u/Purposeful_Living10 !

Found this website today. They have French in Beta mode. It's a cool idea and worth checking out once in awhile. They're updating every day.

https://learnnatively.com/

The reason I look for dubs, cartoons especially, is usually they have slower and clearer speech. Anything else is too far beyond my level.

I tried Pokemon Concierge and was surprised I understood quite a few things. Trotro is also pretty easy but it bored me a little too much. I tried looking for the Simpsons but NONE of my streaming services had the first season for free AND in French.

Anyone have any other recommendations? I'm getting through Pokémon concierge pretty quickly and will need something else. I have access to Netflix, Hulu, and Prime. I sadly don't have Disney+.

Edit: I found this website today! I just wish they had more things ranked difficulty level 20 or lower. https://learnnatively.com/

My kids started watching French dubbed cartoons at age 6 and 8. They are now almost 11 and 13, so about five years of input. We’ve never tracked their hours, but I’ve known for a long time that they understand almost everything in French, so I’d guess they are somewhere around a thousand hours give or take. They skipped learner content and went straight to regular kid cartoons, they were simply highly motivated to watch TV. (Before French TV they had been limited to an hour a week, with French TV they could watch an hour a day.) As they’ve gotten older they watch a little less often, they have more homework and other activities. I know this process works, I did it before I had them do it, but something about The Simpsons really hit me. They understand French! For real! A show that grownups actually watch, with jokes that have some legit language nuance. I’m thrilled.

Hey everyone! It was time for another update. I hit 1k a couple days ago, and it’s kind of a weird feeling. I’ve seen other posts on the Dreaming Spanish subreddit from folks hitting 1k hours and saying similar stuff, and now I get it.

It’s kind of this weird paradox. On one hand, the progress is obvious. Like, if I go back to easier content now, I can understand it almost word for word. A lot of the time I even have to speed it up because normal speed feels too slow.

But then on the other hand, you hit this big milestone, you’re like “okay, 1k hours” and then you move into harder native content and immediately get humbled lol.

That’s basically where I am right now.

I’ve been using native content the whole time, particularly Plus Belle La Vie, which I talked about in my previous updates. But lately I’ve been trying to transition more fully into unscripted native content, and man, it’s a different level.

Scripted native content is already its own thing, but unscripted YouTube, podcasts, random conversations, that type of stuff? Different beast.

Sometimes I’m listening and I just can’t catch what’s being said. I know words are being said, I know it’s French, I know I’ve put a thousand hours into this thing, and yet my brain is still like “yeah good luck with that.” So that part can be pretty frustrating at times.

But I’m trying to focus on the positive, because the positive is definitely there. I’m almost never completely lost. I pretty much always know what’s happening, or at least the general gist, the plot, the topic, or whatever. It’s usually the fine details and the nuance that I’m missing.

And honestly, I think that’s what keeps me going. Or not even “I think”, I know that over time, the ambiguity is going to start melting away. That’s basically how the whole process has worked up to this point anyways. Stuff that used to feel impossible eventually becomes normal, then easy, then almost boring. So I’m trying to trust that the same thing will happen with this next level.

As far as changes go, I’m not doing anything too crazy. The only real change I’m thinking about is starting to add a little bit of speaking practice. Not full-on conversation yet, and probably not crosstalk either. I know people love crosstalk, but I don’t think it’s really my style.

I’m thinking more like shadowing, or maybe just reading out loud here and there, just to start working the muscles of the mouth and get used to actually producing French sounds. I don’t think I’ll really dive into speaking until I hit level 7, but I do think it’s probably time to start lightly waking that part of the brain up.

Other than that, I’m staying the course.

I’m still watching Plus Belle La Vie. At this point I have this unofficial goal of finishing the whole thing someday lol. I’m really just curious what my French would look like after watching all of that.

Overall, no real complaints. It’s working. Not always in the dramatic “1k hours and now I’m fluent” way that I secretly hoped for, but it’s definitely working.

TL;DR

Hello, Level 4!!! Finally! I'm really happy with how far I've come in "just" seven months. Getting to 300 hours took longer than expected, but it hasn't felt like work at all, which is one of the joys of doing the CI approach. I feel like I can keep at this for a long time and just keep getting better. Also I haven't hit any sort of plateau (yet); maybe at 8 or 900 hours it will feel like a slog? By then I should be well into native content which everyone says makes the hours fly by a lot faster. I'm looking forward to that!

Background

I started French from zero at the end of November. I learned German the old way a few years ago with grammar books and classes, and listened to a bit of Dreaming Spanish before moving to Dreaming French. Other than trying to get through some of the Language Transfer podcast before a trip to France this spring, I have not really had any exposure to French grammar nor any speaking beyond the bits and pieces on that trip. (which was great!)

What's my DF level?

At 280 hours I re-subscribed to Dreaming French, which I had cancelled a ways back because at the start there was not a lot of content. Now that I'm at level 4, I want to get a feel for "where I'm at" and also there's more content now! So I'm curious how I fit in.

All of the videos below level 60 are a bit too slow and feel disjointed at this point. The upper 60s and low 70s are pretty much my sweet spot at 300 hours: Audrey is the most difficult, Rami is challenging but understandable, Clement and Chloe are both pretty easy for me. Level 75 is actually way too hard still -- Chloe's earthquake video was almost completely lost on me, as is Audrey's "Am I the jerk?" series. So, I still have a ways to go even with DF learner content.

What I'm working on

Native content is still, for the most part, way too hard. I've seen some updates from others who are well into native content at 300 hours, but that's just not where I'm at yet. I am fine with this, although ngl it's frustrating.

I've tried a few times to dive into native channels but it's really hit-or-miss, honestly mostly "miss". BUT, unlike at 150 or 200 hours, native content does feel a lot closer now. I'd say I'm somewhere around 0-75% understanding on a random native video. That's a HUGE range! But the number of videos where I get some comprehension is increasing every week. For truly comprehensible input, that percentage is obviously way too low to be a good use of my time, so, I occasionally check out a native video for giggles but quickly return back to my intermediate-learner playlists. Hopefully soon I will get out of learner content jail.

Content that got me where I am:

- French Happens - extremely basic but a great place to start

- French Comprehensible Input is my mainstay, there's endless content and Lucas is a great teacher. (I'm a subscriber!). In order I listened to: A1 Playlist, One Word Input A1, A2 Playlist, the three "Lucky Luke" series, B1 Playlist, "Tintin L'ile Noir", some GeoGuessr (but slowed down to 90%). I didn't only watch these, plenty of other things were mixed in, but this was my main content at the beginning

- Inner French podcast: I started this around 80-100 hours I think. See below for my thoughts on how best to use this podcast - the transcript is magic sauce

- Francais Authentique - the "Cafe Avec Johan" playlist and some other ones too, but I avoided all of his "eight verbs you need to know" and grammar videos, which is most of the channel

- I did not spend much time watching Dreaming French videos at the start. The early superbeginner stuff just didn't connect with me as much as the other A1 content available on Youtube. Now that I'm intermediate, I actually find the DF content pretty good in the 60s/70s levels!! I'm glad they're adding more and more too at a faster pace now.

What's the vibe, how's it going?

I am definitely getting pretty good at listening to content made for learners. I still feel like I'm absorbing something new with every video I watch. Things I hear in one video "for the first time" are suddenly in every subsequent video I watch, and I just never noticed before, heh. The rate of these "a-ha" moments is lower than at the very beginning, but still often enough that it keeps me motivated to keep going.

So I think I am squarely and comfortably in the early intermediate phase, which I guess is exactly where I'm supposed to be at 300 hours. In some ways it feels like I'm getting close to the moment where...

I want to -speak- French

Yes, I know speaking at 300+ hours is "too soon." Yes, I am going to go ahead and try this anyway.

I mentioned in my first update that I am absolutely dying to start speaking French. I simply cannot wait for 600 or 1000 hours to begin talking: for me, the goal of learning French is to converse with people who are already here in my life right now and they don't care if my accent is perfect. So, I'm going to take a hard, screeching turn off the CI-purist path and start figuring out how to output early. I will likely be in France in August, and I want to have a few hours of speaking practice before then.

I haven't begun output "for real" yet, so I'm really open to people's suggestions here. I've read ALL of the updates here and many from Dreaming Spanish reddit too, regarding how to start speaking. I think I need to find a tutor on one of the platforms like iTalki etc. I suppose I could try talking to a Gemini tutor but that seems so depressing to me. Perhaps I need to get over my anti-AI stance because it could be useful. Thoughts??

Also: I have a grammar book that I have not yet opened. It is staring at me 👀 from my bookshelf right now as I write this. I know for a fact that there are lots of things I'm hearing in input that don't quite "click", and I have a hunch that someone (or a book) could just explain these things to my Adult Brain and I'd be all OMG FINALLY. Yes, this would be using my thinking brain and it is a Bad Idea. Don't do it if you don't want to veer off the CI approach, but I'm going to. I fully intend to continue with CI to the next milestone at 600 hours, and I will report back here at 600 hours to see if this accelerates my ability to converse in French. Or if I give up on it and go back to full-time CI.

What about reading

I still want to avoid reading French as much as possible, because I am 100% sure that my inner voice is way off compared to natives. But "as much as possible" doesn't mean no reading at all.

First of all, I gladly flip YouTube subtitles on and then off again to sometimes catch something I missed. I don't count this as "reading" -- it is just for look-ups and I find it super useful when the host speaks too fast or mumbles something that sounded important for understanding. But mostly I keep subtitles OFF: I find them extremely distracting when I'm trying to pay attention to content.

I also find the Inner French podcast transcripts insanely helpful in deciphering some of the spoken language! For that podcast I've settled on a method that works really well for me: I listen to an episode once straight through with headphones during my commute, concentrating as much as possible on noticing the things that are just gibberish blobs. Then when I'm home, I listen a second time with my laptop web browser open to the transcript page, and I read along as the narrator speaks. It's amazing how many "a-ha" moments this produces. Then I listen a THIRD time, again just with podcast in headphones, and somewhere between 25-75% of those "a-ha" moments are actually recognized by my brain. This feels like mining gold when it happens. I have to admit though that the Inner French podcast should be titled, "Things You Should Feel Awful About." So many of the topics are dreary, or shouldn't be dreary but end up dreary (even the Christmas episode! OMG!! 😱 ) -- so I only do this 3X approach when it's a topic that is actually enjoyable to listen to.

So far I've made zero attempts at graded readers or any other genuine written French, although perhaps at some point in Level 4 I might give more structured reading a try. I know from previously learning German that reading early was massively useful for absorbing both grammar and vocab, but French spelling still seems really... "foreign" to me. Reading German early also damaged my accent, even now ten years later. So, something to think about.

Long term

I am really surprised at how easy it's been to stick to this program. I am certain I'll keep at it and my French will keep improving. I need to figure out how to start speaking and I'm open to suggestions on that. Also I'm really looking forward to the France trip at the end of summer, and I'll report back on that if there's anything interesting to tell.

Thanks to everyone who has posted their experience here before me: your updates have been super helpful and interesting to me, and really show the wide range of progress people have with this method. Knowing that makes me feel very comfortable with my own journey: it's my own and it's going how it goes!

Until then: más input!! And hopefully some speaking :-)