French Short Stories for Beginners

By: Frederic Bibard

Narrated by: Frederic Bibard, Mariem Nouni

Length: 11 hrs and 39 mins

Publisher's summary

Improve your French pronunciation, and listening skills. Make learning new vocabulary so much easier with 15 fun and engaging French stories.

Listening to short stories is an effective and enjoyable method to learning French. For those of you who can't just slip away from life, travel to France, and immerse yourself in the language in order to learn it, this is your solution! Listening to native-spoken French stories is the next best thing.

• Expand your vocabulary that you can use immediately, every day. You will add 1500+ French words and expressions to your repertoire through the encounter of descriptive sentences and casual conversations woven throughout the stories.
• Sharpen your comprehension of the spoken French by listening to a native French speaker.
• Learn how to pronounce French words properly.
• Familiarize yourself with a wide range of grammar structures and put them to use today.
• Avoid the monotonous task of memorizing grammar rules. How awesome is that?!

All stories are written using vocabulary that you could easily use in your day-to-day conversations.

Start improving your French today!

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2016 Frederic Bibard (P)2017 Frederic Bibard

Very Helpful Book

French: Short Stories for Beginners + Audio is an amazing book. I took French throughout high school but did not continue to practice after graduation. This was a wonderful refresher. I was not sure how easily I would be able to follow the stories after years without practice, but the style of this book was very easy to follow.

The book is separated into chapters that are anywhere from ten to twenty minutes long. This gives ample time to fit a chapter into anyone’s busy schedule. There are also various speeds that the book can be listened to. It can go as slow as 0.75x or as fast as 3x. This allows more advanced listeners to go through the chapters faster. It even offers a sleep timer to get some practice in before bed!

I would highly recommend this book to anyone who has taken French or who wants to learn French. It is very easy to follow and can fit into anyone’s daily schedule. It has definitely helped me sharpen up my French speaking skills.

Great for anyone learning French!

Would you consider the audio edition of French Short Stories for Beginners to be better than the print version?

I don't believe there is a print version. Regardless, I recommend the audio version because it will help a learner of French with listening comprehension.

What did you like best about this story?

Since this is an audio book that's purpose is educational, there were any stories in particular. I was more focused on simply understand each sentence as a whole which was easy because it was read well.

Which character – as performed by Frederic Bibard and Mariem Nouni – was your favorite?

Again, I wasn't really focused on the characters but rather the voice of the narrator. That being said, the narrators did a wonderful job.

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?

I liked how at the end of each chapter there was a vocabulary review. It definitely helped with understanding French words that were new to me.

Any additional comments?

Listening comprehension is one of the most important, and the most difficult parts of learning a new language. French Short Stories For Beginners is great because the author speaks clearly and slowly, which is very important. There is also a vocabulary recap at the end of each chapter, which helps internalize any new word or phrase.

Accessible and super useful! Great stories.

Would you listen to French Short Stories for Beginners again? Why?

Definitely. I have been learning French for years. But not being able to practice it every single day, makes it a bit hard to remember all the extensive vocabulary and verbs. With French: Short Stories for Beginners, I was able to recall all that I have learned in the past.

What did you like best about this story?

It is a great, practical way for new French students or beginners to practice. It is super easy to follow the stories while listening, plus it gives you the opportunity to experience various situations with multiple responses and vocabulary. It gives you the word in both French and English for better understating, and at the end of every Section there is a Vocabulary Recap for you to review the words and phrases in each story.

Which character – as performed by Frederic Bibard and Mariem Nouni – was your favorite?

Clémentine and Clara

If you were to make a film of this book, what would the tag line be?

C'est Paris!

Any additional comments?

It also gives you the chance to learn and keep up with the whole French pronunciation. The voices are clear, and easy to listen to.

I would highly recommend this book, to a first learner or anyone who has previously taken French. Plus, it is super easy to fit into a daily schedule! A really effective way to sharpen your listening and speaking French skills.

Great for learning and hearing everyday speech

If you could sum up French Short Stories for Beginners in three words, what would they be?

Fun, interesting, and helpful

What did you like best about this story?

That I could hear everyday speech and practice listening, which tends to be my weakest point.

What does Frederic Bibard and Mariem Nouni bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

More depth to the characters.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

I would break it up into parts since I'm a stay-at-home parent and don't have long stints of free time.

Any additional comments?

I took three years of high school French but have forgotten most of it. Compared to other audiobooks I have used, I really enjoyed this one. It's simple, repetitive, and interesting. Most audiobooks only teach you basic conversation and travel language, but I enjoyed the stories that increased my vocabulary knowledge while also exposing me to everyday speech.

Excellent book for improving French comprehension

This audiobook is an excellent tool for improving your listening skills in French! The stories are short and easy to follow, and the more difficult vocabulary is repeated and translated into English at the end of the story. Being able to speak Italian has helped me a lot with learning French, and I'm not sure if I would be able to follow along with this book if I was a complete beginner. If you have the basics of French down this is a great way to practice your listening skills and to improve your vocabulary. The speakers are clear and easy to understand and give a nice explanation of how to use the book at the very beginning.
I would definitely recommend this book for anyone looking to improve their French!

Great way to learn and improve.

This is an excellent audio book for beginners.

This book can be divided into three parts. The stories are the same in each one, but listening to them gets increasingly more challenging once you move on from part to part. This makes for a great way to work on your listening and vocabulary step by step.

The stories involve different characters and situations, making them engaging enough while also allowing you to learn or to be reminded of many different words and expressions.

The narrators’ enunciation is clear, making it possible to understand each and every word they read. Elaborate words or expressions are specifically repeated, making it easier to understand and assimilate them.

All in all, this book can really help beginners improve and make steady progress, the book being built in a way that specifically allows for that to happen. I would strongly advise to give it a chance.

Simple and fun!

I took French at high school level for 3 years, and now a few years later, I was looking for a fun, effective way to sharpen my skills again. I enjoyed using this audiobook as a way to do just that. The stories were full of useful phrases. Also, being able to listen to the native French speaker really makes you pay extra attention to pronunciation and grammar. The listening format also makes it easy to learn and be productive in my spare time.

Great resource for learning basic French

Any additional comments?

I really enjoyed "French Short Stories for Beginners". Specifically, the short light stories, the small chapter guides, and the female narrator helped me grasp not only the definition of some simple (and complex) French phrases, but also adequately learn the pronunciation of said phrases.

In the past, I have tried learning French from children's books, academic textbooks, and even fun 'apps' on my iPhone, but I would never fully grasp the phrases and words in the context of a conversation or story. The first story was very cute; it was about an English girl who traversed to France to learn the poetic language. In the process of hearing the story, I picked up on some basic phrases and was surprised how quickly I learned the meaning, usage variation, and pronunciation of these key phrases. In other stories I learned extremely useful phrases like, "Ja vais bien, merci." I also learned the useful sentence, "Et toi, comment tu t'appelles?" That phrase will certainly help when I'm asking a Frenchman their name!

After each short story, the book provides a small chapter guide. The story itself has important phrases in bold print. Then those bold-print phrases are defined in a succinct and efficient manner in the small study guide that immediately follows each story. Also, the author provides alternate word usages, so if the French word for "Japanese" that's provided is in the female form, the guide completes the learning process by also providing the male form of the word "Japanese." Moreover, the narrator repeats the slow, clear pronunciation of each phrase twice and also covers their English translation.

I really enjoyed the female narration of both the stories and the study guides! She has a very clear, audible voice, which I find especially useful in learning a hard-to-pronounce language like French. Other resources I've used in the past had narrators who spoke way too fast or too quietly. The pitch and pace of the female narration is perfect for learning French.

This book is awesome

I love this book every single minute that I've read it. Although I am not an expert speaking french I have some knowledge about this language but my vocabulary is not the best . And the last aspect was not a obstacle when I was listening the book. The histories are funny and interesting also the people of the book speak clearly and SHORT. It means that is not a tedious book. Defintely I will recomend this book for the people that is not and expert speaking french and want to improve their listening skills .

Fun French Stories

What made the experience of listening to French Short Stories for Beginners the most enjoyable?

These audio stories make learning much more interesting. It's definitely more fun than sitting in a classroom and learning grammar rules! I learnt French in high school and the course is already helping me to remember words I thought I had long forgotten. It is so much easier to remember new words when you hear them as part of a story, rather than trying to memorize a list of random words. I find listening the most difficult part of learning a language but the character's speak clearly and there are vocab recaps at the end of the lesson, which really helps. This course is also more convenient than a traditional classroom course. I can listen on my daily commute to work or when I'm exercising. I would recommend this course to anyone who has the desire to learn French.