8. How often do they come out?

Each volume of Champs-Elysées consists of eleven issues, released about every 6-8 weeks. Puerta del Sol, Acquerello italiano and Schau ins Land are designed as bi-monthlies, with six issues per volume.

If the speech on Champs-Elysées seems daunting at first, just remember, no one in Paris speaks second-year French. All of the speakers you hear are French natives, speaking at speeds that seem perfectly normal to them. We never ask speakers to speed up. Tuning your ear to authentic speech simply takes practice. We recommend you listen to each program several times through before you use the transcript. See if you can get the gist of the different features. Then, listen to the program again with the transcript and see how many of the gaps you can fill in. Finally, look up the words and expressions you don’t know to fill in the final pieces of the puzzle. Remember to always take a stab at figuring a word out before you look it up. You’ll retain a lot more vocabulary that way. (That’s why the vocabulary section is separate.)

If you need or want more help in your language study, you might want to consider the study supplements. Prepared by our editors, they feature listening and grammar exercises based on the programs.

Teachers and language learners looking for additional ideas and Resources should log on to the discussion forum at our Web site from time to time. It’s a great place to meet other subscribers and see how they are using authentic materials to improve their language skills or supplement other classroom materials.