5 Tips to Improve Your French Pronunciation 🗣️

Transcript:

Bonjour à tous, hello everyone! Welcome back to another member's only episode of the French Made Easy podcast. Today, we're going to talk about how to improve your French pronunciation.

Now, let's face it—French pronunciation can be tricky. I’m not going to tell you otherwise. There are, as you know, lots of silent letters, nasal sounds, and of course the infamous French 'R', so I know that it can feel a little overwhelming at times, especially when you’re just starting out.

But just like with anything new that you learn, one of the keys to better pronunciation—apart from (of course) learning the correct techniques and sounds (which by the way you can learn inside my course, French Pronunciation Made Easy)—is consistent practice. I keep saying this, but just learning the rules is not enough. You’re not going to remember any rules or exceptions without consistent practice. So it's really about building practice habits that make speaking French feel sort of effortless over time.

I’m going to give you a few tips to help you practice and improve your pronunciation:

Spend some time listening to French. It can be one day a week, two days a week—you pick—where you immerse yourself in French. Super, super important. You can immerse yourself through French songs, French podcasts, French movies, French series, French news—anything where you can listen to French speakers. And when you do, I want you to pay attention to how words are pronounced, pay attention to the rhythm of sentences, and how everything sounds and flows together. The more you listen to French, the more familiar you'll become with French.

Another really good practice is dictation. Dictation involves listening to spoken French and writing down what you hear. This type of exercise helps you practice deeply your listening skills. It trains your ear to pick up on nuances in pronunciation that you might otherwise miss. As you improve your listening skills, you’ll find that your speaking skills (your pronunciation) will also improve. You'll start to say something in French and think, ‘Oh, that doesn’t sound right,’ and then you'll correct yourself. So improving your listening skills is definitely going to help your speaking skills.

You can't be shy here—you’ve got to practice speaking out loud as much as possible. Listen to French, and try mimicking what you hear from French speakers. I always ask my pronunciation students, inside my French Pronunciation Made Easy course, to listen to the audio that I’ve recorded and then to repeat after me a few times to practice. Not in your head. Out loud. This could be repeating phrases from a movie, sentences from a podcast, from an audiobook—anything. The goal is to get you to actually speak, and to get comfortable forming French sounds with your mouth.

This is the step that many people don’t do that many people miss, but it's going to be your secret weapon. Use your phone or computer—anything you've got—to record your voice and record yourself speaking French. This can simply be reading a short paragraph, reading words or reading common phrases. Honestly, just go back to my podcast, pick any episode with example sentences, and just record yourself pronouncing the whole sentence. Or just the words if you’re just starting out and if full phrases feel too much for you, just record yourself saying words.

Then, listen back to the recordings to spot areas where you feel like you need to improve. It might feel awkward at first, but it's a great way to become aware of your pronunciation. You might listen to something you’ve recorded and think, ‘Hmm, that doesn’t sound quite right, how is Mathilde pronouncing it? Let’s try to say it as close to her as possible.’ It’s active work, but I promise, it’s worth it for your pronunciation confidence. And it can be a bit messy—it doesn’t have to be perfect, and it doesn’t have to sound exactly like me. Remember, you’re not trying to sound exactly like native speakers. You want to be understood by French speakers, that’s the main goal.

Now, I often say this, but French has a lot of sounds that will be similar to those in your native language. But French also has unique sounds, and also some sounds that will be different from the ones in your native language. So your work, here, is to identify the French sounds that are different than those in your native language, the ones that are the hardest for you—maybe it's the nasal vowels, or maybe it’s the [y] sound. Spend some time, consistently every week, practicing these specific sounds.

This is the hard part—it’s not going to happen overnight. Improvement, especially for French pronunciation, takes time. Don’t believe people telling you that you can learn French pronunciation in 10 minutes or that you’ll be a better French speaker in one hour. It takes time. The main thing is consistency. Set aside a little time every week to practice pronunciation. Even just 30 minutes a week can make a big difference over weeks and over months.