One Thing In A French Day | Stories from Paris in French

This podcast is for anyone who wants to gain ease in French and enjoy the feeling of living in France like a French person. Improving your listening comprehension improves so much else along the way: your French, your fluency, your vocabulary, your syntax, your curiosity.

From the beginning, I’ve written day by day. I choose my topics from what happened to me a few days earlier, sometimes that very day. It’s not always comfortable, and it’s a little risky, but that’s what makes it an adventure. It also gives the podcast its logbook feel: it follows my life, the seasons, my travels, my encounters. Nothing is invented.

You might think that writing episodes before recording them takes them away from natural spoken French. In fact, the writing is the podcast’s main asset for learners. I take great care with my sentences: short and long, simple and complex, with all kinds of tenses, plus snippets of dialogue when I report a conversation. Spontaneous speech is fascinating, but its syntax is very different. To express an opinion or tell a story well, you need to know how a sentence is built. These aren’t textbook sentences, though, and their contexts aren’t limited. You hear well-written French again and again, you notice how words are used in context, and those sentence patterns become instinctive.

For several years, I’ve also shared interviews with people who live or work in France and whom I want to meet. I prepare my questions around their work or their approach, and I meet them in person, at their workplace or in a café. Hearing other voices trains your ear to new rhythms and new ways of saying things. And because listening often to one voice already does much of the work, adapting to others becomes easier.

I’m not a French teacher, and the podcast letters that come with each transcript aren’t lessons. French is the language I live, think and write in, and I like showing you what is natural or useful for a learner. In the letters you’ll find useful phrases taken from the episode, along with playful exercises inspired by writers, poetry, researchers’ books, music, the history of indexes, encounters… They’re a lively complement to more formal lessons when you’re learning on your own.

Written, recorded and produced by me, Laetitia, near Paris, France.


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Contact: [email protected]

About this podcast: One Thing In A French Day is a French podcast for intermediate and advanced learners (B1–C1) who want to learn French with authentic, spoken French. Each episode is a true story about French daily life and life in Paris, with a full transcript. A good fit for French listening practice, real French vocabulary and Paris stories told by a native speaker.