Bonjour, quoi de beau?

Let’s go back to practicing your listening skills, and more specifically to how you take notes. 
As you must expect, your notes are going to be very important! The challenging part might be that you’re gonna have to work on yourself a little and let go of doing things correctly and perfectly.
Because you need to give yourself permission not to understand everything, as you already know, and to first hear and jot down as much as you can on your paper. And then, after listening to the video or audio twice, three times or more, meaning will be created and you will comprehend what needs to be comprehended. Before you start your listening activity, remember to underline first the keywords in the questions, so that you know which content to focus on and don’t get overwhelmed trying to understand all of it. 

 

As we said, your notes should be chaotic and wrongly spelt : you write down phonetically, just as you hear it, the content you are discovering.
That’s why you should find on your paper abbreviations, symbols, arrows… have your own organization! Here is how I do it :

As you can see, a T-Chart when 2 persons speak/for a dialogue, or a chart with several columns if more people are involved, can help creating organization in the normal disorder of your notes. 

Once you’re done with listening/watching twice, or more if you need, read the transcription of the audio or video, to see how much you understood! And if your practice feels too difficult during the activity, use French subtitles for the specific parts you are struggling with.

“Changez de langue et vous changerez vos pensées.” – Karl Albrecht