The primary purpose of French audio programs is to teach listeners to comprehend spoken French, and to a lesser extent, how to properly pronounce and to speak French words themselves.
Many of the formal audio lessons will give you time to repeat words and phrases you hear, giving you the opportunity to pronounce words as closely as possibly to the native speaker’s pronunciation, which will improve your accent.
Learning oral comprehension should be your first priority if you will be traveling to a French-speaking country soon, though it’s important to make sure you learn more than just guidebook phrases, because you need to be able to understand simple responses, and native speaking French people won’t necessarily respond via the very formal, textbook conversational phrases that you’ve learned.
Audio course or audiobook?
When you’re looking for audio programs, note that some will be audiobooks of courses that were originally written to be read as books, and some will be designed from the beginning to be listened to.
- Most audio courses will include a significant number of dialogue sound clips of native French speakers; some audiobooks might not (but plenty do). Be sure you know the format of the course before you purchase it.
Learn French Audiobooks
Note that here we’re talking about audiobooks that teach French, not audiobooks in French (see here for those audiobooks).
Learn French 6 in 1 is a 33-hour comprehensive course that’s available as an ebook or as an audiobook and progresses from beginning to intermediate to advanced French and also offers an accompanying PDF if you purchase the audiobook version. It’s also written and endorsed by the Dupont Language Institute, which offers a little more confidence that the all the lessons are accurate.
Learn French in Your Car is 23-hour audiobook
Learn French Audio CD Programs
If you’ve got a CD player, some of these classic learn French courses are still the most highly reviewed ones out there! These all have an audio CD version (see other audio reviews here). The third course listed below, Behind the Wheel French, is also available through Audible as an audiobook.
For travelers who need to learn basic French quickly, Pimsleur’s Instant Conversation audio course is consistently one of the, if not the, best-selling French audio courses. Its purpose is to quickly teach useful phrases, grammar, and vocabulary to tourists who need to be able to ask and communicate simple concepts to French speakers. It assumes you have no previous knowledge of the language, and goes at a fairly slow pace to ensure that you retain as much as possible.
If your goal is conversational fluency, Michel Thomas’s natural French speaking course is especially effective because it uses native speakers and real conversations to get you speaking and understanding a more natural, casual French, and help you progress over the 10-CD course to an intermediate verbal comprehension level.
Finally, one of the best comprehensive courses for learning French, if you are planning to learn to write and read in French as well as to speak it and understand it, Behind the Wheel French is a great choice for the audio portion of your learning, and it comes with written material to help you understand the vocabulary and grammar used in each lesson. It has both audio CD and audiobook digital file versions.
Learn French Audio Podcasts
Some French learning podcasts (more reviews of podcasts here) follow a formal order of lessons, but many are either immersive or cover varied topics in each episode.
One of the best beginner’s audio courses on podcast is Learn French by Podcast, which teaches natural, conversational French and contains 147 free episodes. Updated lessons and more comprehensive learn French audio courses are available for a monthly fee from their website.
One of our favorite podcasts for intermediate and advanced learners is Le Journal en Français Facile, a daily updated news podcast that reports the news in French by native speakers. The format is exactly like a normal news podcast except the reporters speak a bit slower, more clearly, and with less idiomatic expressions so that you can learn spoken French at a more advanced level.
What Else to Study
The one concern with studying French with only audio lessons is that you may struggle to create unique sentences on your own and in situations you haven’t studied in your courses if you don’t have a decent grasp of basic French grammar. We have many grammar lessons on this website, so spend some time learning the basics to increase your confidence when actually interacting with French speakers and constructing your own sentences, even if your only goal is to be conversationally proficient or fluent in French.
