This week’s French lesson included an oral comprehension activity pulled from the site Partajon. It features a 6 minute audio clip about attitudes towards technology: love it, hate it, fear it, welcome it (Technophile ou Technophobe?). It’s rated C1, and I had no difficulty understanding the overall arc of the discussion and most of the specifics. When I turned to the accompanying worksheet to test comprehension, I discovered that I had missed a few details like title of a book referenced and some neologisms for new concepts in the intersection between sociology and technology. But on the whole I could listen and understand this clip with «les doigts dans le nez» (a new expression my teacher supplied me today).
I have a knack for remembering English conversation close to verbatim for a short time after I hear it, and it’s always bothered me that my ability to do this in French is pretty much non-existent. I can completely understand what is being said, and I can talk about it confidently afterwards, but I can’t parrot back the exact sentence or use the exact phrase that I heard just a minute or two earlier the way I can in English. But it’s starting to develop bit by bit. And I am getting better at remembering the structure of a wide-ranging radio conversation: what was talked about first, what second, what examples of each point were provided, etc. It feels good.