French listening practice: a number drill and exam-style samples

This French listening practice page starts with a drill: your browser says a number in French, and you type the digits you heard. Below the drill, the page explains how to use it, where the official exam-style French listening exercises are, and which other listening sources to try, each described from its own page. For the exam sections themselves, read TEF Canada listening and TCF Canada listening. For everyday listening by audio, see Learn French by podcast.

How does this French listening practice drill work?

The drill above is a short French listening practice on numbers. Press Play, listen, type the number in digits, then press Check. The drill tells you if you were right and shows the number if you were not. Press Next number for a new one.

You choose one of four ranges:

A few details:

• Slower replays the same number at a lower speed.
• The counter shows how many you got right out of how many you tried, and your current streak.
• Typing accepts digits with or without a space or comma, so 1000, 1 000 and 1,000 all count.
• The voice is your device’s own French voice. The drill picks a Canadian French voice when the device has one, and any French voice otherwise. If the browser has no French voice, the drill says so and cannot play.
• Privacy. Nothing you type leaves your browser.

Why practise hearing numbers in French?

Numbers are everywhere in spoken French you need to follow: times, dates, prices, phone numbers, addresses and room numbers. The exam body for TEF Canada makes a related point in its listening advice. It says regular listening helps you pick out useful information, and it names numbers in its list with key words, dates and places [3].

Some French numbers are also built in a way English speakers do not expect. The Office québécois de la langue française (OQLF) writes them out in its language help pages [7][8]:

Read word by word, 71 is “sixty and eleven” and 80 is “four twenties”. You have to hear the whole number before you know which digits to write. That is why the 21 to 100 range is worth time even after the small numbers feel easy.

How should you use the drill?

These are general habits, not findings from a study.

1. Start at 0 to 20. Move up a range when you get several right in a row.
2. Answer after one listen. Press Play once, then type. In TEF Canada listening, each audio is played only once [2], so practise deciding after a single hearing. For how TCF Canada plays its recordings, see its listening guide linked above.
3. Use Slower after a miss, not before. When you get one wrong, replay it slowly and find the part you missed: the tens, the “and”, the hundreds.
4. Say it back. After the answer shows, say the number aloud once, the way you heard it.
5. Keep rounds short. Ten numbers you can repeat tomorrow are easier to keep up than fifty once.

Where can you find French listening exam practice?

A French listening practice test in the real exam format comes from the exam body, not from a drill like this one. For TEF Canada, the exam body, Le français des affaires (CCI Paris Ile-de-France), lists its listening material on its preparation page [1]:

The preparation page does not say whether this material costs anything, so this page does not call it free [1].

To use the sample as exam practice, copy the conditions on the exam body’s examination page. The listening section has 40 multiple-choice questions in 40 minutes, with 4 answers per question and one correct [2]. Each audio is played only once. You get a few seconds to read the questions before the audio starts, and you cannot go back [2]. No scrap paper or notes are allowed during listening [2].

The exam body’s listening article, written for the TEF in general, says the questions come from everyday situations such as public announcements, interviews, conversations and radio programmes [3]. Its advice is to read the questions and all the answer options before the audio, and to answer even when you are not sure, since a wrong or blank answer costs no points [3].

For TCF Canada, the official examples and the format are covered in TCF Canada listening. This page does not repeat them.

Where can you find more French listening exercises?

These three are described only from their own pages. The order carries no meaning, and this is not a ranking.

The RFI page does not use the word free, and neither does the OHdio page [4][6]. The OHdio page does not describe any of its content as made for learners and names no learner level [6]. For more on these and other podcasts, see Learn French by podcast.

How do you listen so the practice counts?

A simple routine, offered as general advice rather than a study’s finding:

• Listen once for the gist. Before replaying, say in one sentence what it was about.
• Replay a short stretch. Pick 20 or 30 seconds and replay it until you can say what was said.
• Check the transcript after, not before. RFI’s bulletin comes with one [4]. Hear it first, then read.
• Write down the numbers. Times, dates and amounts in a news item are the same skill as the drill above.
• Read the questions first when you practise with exam material, as the exam body advises [3].

Common mistakes

• Treating the drill as an exam. It is a practice drill on numbers. It gives no score or level.
• Replaying every number before answering. The exam plays each audio once [2]. Answer first, replay after.
• Practising exam listening without the audio. The TEF sample paper comes with a separate audio download [1].
• Stopping at 0 to 20. Long forms such as soixante et onze and quatre-vingt-dix only come up in the higher ranges [7][8].
• Leaving a hard question blank. A wrong or blank answer scores 0 either way [2][3].
• Relying on a guide, including this one. The exam body’s pages and the resources’ pages change. Compare their dates with the date at the top of this one.

See also: French movies and TV.

See also: French music for learners.

Sources