French
Online Extensive Reading and Listening Programme

Reading Short Stories

Reading short stories written in French is an excellent way of building your vocabulary and immersing yourself in longer ‘literary’ narratives.

• Visit the following site http://www.languageguide.org/francais/lectures/
• You will be given the choice between beginners (rated easy/medium/hard) and more advanced readings (nouvelles de Guy de Maupassant)
• Click on a title to access the script and the audio recording if you wish.
• Another good site for more advanced students is Archivox. You could start with  ‘La chèvre de M. Seguin’ by Alphone Daudet from ‘Les Lettres de mon Moulin’ which is a collection of tale like stories set in Provence: http://www.archivox.com/?page=titre&catid=2&id=13. You can just read the story or listen and read.

TIP : When reading short stories, you don’t need to understand every single word. Try to aim instead for general or global understanding. If you find that a story is too hard, long or boring, just stop reading and select a different one. Remember also, that you don’t have to read online. You can always print stories off to read later.