Namke Learn Quebec French

The free audiobooks with texts at LitteratureAudio can really help you learn French fast! If you have an eReader (example: the Sony PRS 650) then you have sound, text and a very handy ‘quick access’ French-English dictionary. LitteratureAudio uses a variety of male and female voices to read the texts. Their web site is a real treasure chest of quality French language learning material!

All texts are legally free of copyright restrictions and have no DRM (digital rights management locks) on the eBooks or the mp3 files.

They already offer over 1,500 free French classic books, essays, letters and short stories. Everything nicely organized by writer, category and speaker. It’s free and there is no registration required. You can easily preview the sound files and texts before downloading them. Finally, everything they offer has both an audiobook and a matching text. First class work!

Litterature audio.com or LitteratureAudio?

Note ; the name of the web site is Litterature audio.com (a tough name to use in a blog post!). I will refer to them here as LitteratureAudio.

Tip : If you look at their sidebar you will fine this section : Régions & Pays. You can fin Quebec listed there.

If you are in a hurry then

Click here to visit LitteratureAudio Home Page

Why is LitteratureAudio so useful?

Great texts, good audio files in mp3 format, free with no registration required, well designed web site.

The most efficient way to learn any language is :

1. Get a text and look at it to find any words and phrases that you don’t understand.

2. Listen to a native language speaker speaking the text word for word while following along with the text (printed, on your computer screen, on your eReader).

3. Repeat steps one and two.

4. Get a new text – For learning French : don’t bother doing a text more than twice

Until LitteratureAudio was created, it was very hard to find free French mp3 audiobooks with word-for-word transcripts.

One way to improve your spoken French accent

Get the printed text ready and then try and speak along with the audiobook speaker. This is hard.

Tip : If you have audio software (like Audacity) then slow down the Tempo (not the Pitch) of the audio file. You will have a perfect accent spoken slower. I find that beginners can speak along if you slow the sound file down to about about 60 % – 70 % of the normal speed.

Improving your writing skills

One simple way to improve your French writing skills is simply to take a few minutes to write out the first few sentences of a text. Since you have already heard the sentences pronounced with a good accent, this writing exercise is a low impact way to help you to develop good writing patterns. After a long day at work (or early in the morning), a low impact language exercise is much appreciated!

Lots of theories but I would just suggest that you try it : listen to an audiobook and write out a couple of sentences a day. After one month, you should notice that you read, write and understand French much better. You have everything to gain and nothing to lose. There is no risk in trying out this method.

How long are the texts and audiobook sound files?

Good news!

They offer full books. They also offer famous essays, letters and short stories. You can find audiobook files that are 3 minutes long and you can find sound files that are several hours long.

It’s up to you, but it might be a good idea to start with shorter texts and audio files. If you have a busy day then you might find that working with the shorter content is more comfortable and effective.

One Essential Tip for Improving Your French Accent

If you listen to music then you have probably noticed that (in general) men sing with deeper voices than women.

Can you imagine the blues singer B.B. King trying to sing Celine Dion songs with the high voice of Celine Dion? How about Celine Dion trying desperately to sing blues songs with the deep voice of B.B. King? Would it sound a bit weird? I am using extremes here, but the point is a good one.

The same thing applies to you and your French accent.

Choose a voice that sounds as close to your own voice as possible. The sound of the voice that you will use for learning French is much more important than the topic of the texts!

The most important point : If you are male then use male voices. If you are female then use female voices.

Men and women speak differently. They speak at different octaves (men’s voices are deeper, female voices speak higher). Men will also put slightly different emphasis, phrasing and inflections in their voice.

For instance : If you are a non-French speaking man and you use female voices to learn French then your accent will be a mixture of your foreign language accent and a female French accent. Ouch. This is the key reason that an accent will sound “wrong and weird” to a native language speaker. Same goes for women. Having men help women with improving their accents (and the other way around) is one of the biggest failures of language instruction. Don’t go there!

LitteratureAudio allows you to avoid this mistake very easily. Find a speaker (or two) with a voice that you like and stick with that. Choose your texts based on the speaker, not the topic.

When you have established a good accent for your voice then you will want to listen to some audio with voices of the other gender. This is to improve your listening skills. In fact, you will notice something interesting (which confirms what I am saying above). After a while (in the case of men), you will notice that you have no trouble understanding a male voice. However, when you start listening to texts with a female voice, you will find that you really have to listen carefully to understand a female voice!

Men do not speak the same as women.

Here is a link to the list of speakers at LitteratureAudio (as of today : 147 people!). The gender of the reader is not always indicated. Scroll down the page to the section ‘Les donneurs de voix’ (speakers). If you click on the name of a speaker then you will see a full list of texts that they have spoken. If you listen to a preview (available for all texts shown) then you will be able to judge if that speaker has a good voice for you.

List of people who read texts for LitteratureAudio

How I use the LitteratureAudio audiobook sound files

After one month of very careful research I got a Sony PRS 650 eReader. Take your time, ask lots of questions, go look at them. I found that all eReaders sound better than they are in practice (unless you just want to read books!)

The Sony PRS 650 has a built in French-English dictionary. Since it has a touch screen, all I have to do to look up a French word is double-tap the word in the text with my finger. (Awesomely fast and efficient!). It also has a built-in mp3 player. However, the Sony PRS 650 is not perfect. Check it out carefully before you buy one!

So, in my case…

1. I find an audiobook on LitteratureAudio that I like. I check out the voice and text on their web site.

2. I copy the French text and paste it into an rtf file on my computer (which the Sony eReader can read).

3. I put the rtf file and the audiobook mp3 file onto my Sony eReader

4. I kick back and listen to the book while following along reading the text

5. And an important last step : I listen to to audiobook without reading the text to see how good my listening skills are and reinforce the French that I already know.

A few Tips for the Sony PRS 650 eReader

1. The mp3 player software interface is clumsy and it has no pause button. It has a mute button, but no pause button. (I don’t get it, but that’s the way it is).

2. The software interface in the eReader for everything is really clumsy. (Who tests these things?)

3. I installed their book management software, got fed up, uninstalled it. Now, I just drag-and-drop files onto the eReader. When you plug it into your computer it is just like any USB drive (very nice! I really like this!). However, you’ll need to be clever to figure out where to put files.

(Tip for XP users : Plug the eReader into your computer and then Click on My Computer – READER – database – media. You can drag-and-drop sound files into the folder audio; and books into folder books. When you disconnect your eReader from the computer then the eReader will automatically find your new files so you can use them right away).

4. To read a book and listen to an audiobook at the same time I must a) open the book b) push the Home button c) select Applications d) select Audio e) select the category for the sound file f) select the sound file itself. Then, real quick, I push the Options button which brings up a menu where I select Continue Reading – and it’s all working. But – remember – no pause button. I’ve gotten used to this (and the value of the audiobook listening experience is worth it to me) but – hey – what a cludge.

Summary : The Sony PRS 650 has absolutely great features. The touch screen allows me to double tap any word to look it up instantly in a French-English dictionary, a nice eReader screen that works great (even in full sunlight), high quality built-in dictionaries and an audio player. But no cheers for the guys who designed the software and button interface.

In case you are interested in knowing more, I suggest that you watch all of the YouTube videos about it. Just search on YouTube for ‘Sony PRS 650′. Each video has a little tip in it. You can also visit a Sony Style store to go look at one. Some of the office supply stores are selling them now.

Sony also has a home page for the PRS 650 on their web site. It is worth a look but (basically) useless. No videos and no tips – just a list of features. I suspect that they used the same software engineers to design the PRS 650 web page and the PRS 650 software. (This is not a compliment).

As I said – take your time. It looks much better than it is. I’ve been using ‘gadgets’ for a long time so I am used to figuring out unnecessarily complicated interfaces. There may also be a Sony PRS 650 user group online somewhere (it only took me a couple of hours to get mine working at 100% for my needs – I haven’t looked).

Here is a video that shows you the basic features of the Sony PRS 650 eReader

Spoken Quebec slang, Quebec French, International French

You have three problems when you learn French in Quebec. First is learning to understand the heavy slang and accent used in Quebec when speaking in casual conversation. The second is learning what people in Quebec now refer to as Quebec French (where the Quebec expressions, vocabulary, accent and some slang are are sprinkled heavily into the popular media in Quebec). The third problem is learning international French (used in France and the grammatical base of Quebec French).

In practical terms :

For spoken Quebec French your learning targets are les Têtes à claques and Laflaque.

For business, your learning targets are the Assemblée nationale du Québec and Canal Savoir.

For international French, your learning target is LitteratureAudio.

LitteratureAudio can really help you to learn international French and help you to understand the accent of France. You can improve your French reading and listening skills! You will be seeing texts pronounced with the accent, inflections, emphasis and phrase timing of France.

Some improvement suggestions for LitteratureAudio

1. Please read the exact texts word-for-word. I have found a couple of texts where the speaker did not match the text. This is very annoying. The beginning was identical so I downloaded it and formatted it. Then – at random intervals – the speaker decided to throw in some annoying mood music and paraphrase/jump sections of the text. The vast majority of the files were perfect.

2. Please do not put in music or other dramatic effects – it’s annoying. The music of the human voice is wonderful.

3. Please specify a gender for all of your speakers on your list of speakers. It is very time-consuming to go through the voices to separate the male voices from the female voices.

4. Please provide the texts in ePub format. It would be great if you could provide ePub format files to go with the audio files. It would save people a lot of time.

5. Perhaps it would be a good idea to use LitteratureAudio as your brand? It is hard to use Litterature audio.com as a name in a blog post and it is hard for search engines to find it. Note : I tested a search for LitteratureAudio with Google and your Home Page was listed at the top of their search results page.

I’ve added a link to LitteratureAudio in the sidebar in the category ‘International French’.

If you’ve found some useful ideas in this blog post then please pass it on to people you know who teach languages and language students. Free audiobooks with matching texts together with eReaders and quick access dictionaries offer tremendous savings in time and money to people learning languages! Thanks!

Thanks! LitteratureAudio – Great job!