Dictation trains your ear and your spelling at once, if you check it the right way.
Dictation, la dictée, is the most French of exercises: someone reads a text, you write it down. French schoolchildren do it for years, and it works just as well for learners, because French spelling hides so much that you cannot hear. French dictation exercises force you to decide, word by word, how a sound is written.
Here is how to do them on your own: choosing a level, listening, checking, and turning each mistake into something to work on.
Reading shows you the right spelling. Dictation makes you produce it from sound alone, which is where French is hard: parle, parles and parlent sound the same, so do a and à, and many final letters are silent. A dictation reveals exactly which of these you have not mastered yet.
A dictation should be slightly hard, never discouraging. Short sentences with everyday words at first, longer ones with agreements later.
| Level | What a dictation looks like | Example |
|---|---|---|
| A1 | short sentence, present tense, common words | Le chat dort sur le lit. |
| A2 | past tense, a few agreements | Hier, nous sommes allés au marché. |
| B1 | relative clauses, past participle agreement | Les fleurs que j'ai achetées sont déjà fanées. |
| B2 and above | longer sentences, subjunctive, rarer words | Bien qu'il fasse froid, les enfants sont sortis jouer. |
Listen to the whole sentence once without writing, to get the meaning. Meaning settles many spellings before you even start: if you know who is doing the action, you know the ending.
Then listen again in chunks of a few words, pausing to write each one. Do not try to keep up with the speaker.
Before checking, listen once more while reading what you wrote. This is when you catch the endings you skipped and the words you split wrongly. Look at every noun and ask what it agrees with.
Compare your text with the original one word at a time. A sentence that looks almost right can hide two mistakes, and a quick glance misses them. Count every difference, including accents: an accent is part of the spelling.
Each kind of mistake points to something different to work on.
| Mistake | What it tells you | What to work on |
|---|---|---|
| achetés instead of achetées | an agreement you did not check | past participle agreement |
| a instead of à | two words that sound the same | homophones |
| eleve instead of élève | accents you do not hear | accents |
| il mangent instead of ils mangent | endings that are silent | silent letters and verb endings |
| a word you could not write at all | vocabulary or listening | read and listen to more French |
Accents and silent endings have their own pages: French accents and French silent letters.
Redo a dictation you got wrong two or three days later, then a week later. If the same mistake comes back, you have found a rule to study, and the French grammar rules explain each one with examples.
Short and regular beats long and rare: five minutes a day at your level, checked word by word. Apostrophe· runs this loop for you: it reads a sentence at your level, from A1 to C2, corrects it word by word and explains the rule behind each mistake.
How do I do a French dictation on my own?
Listen once for meaning, then write in short chunks with pauses, listen a third time while rereading, and check word by word against the text.
Are dictation exercises good for beginners?
Yes, with short sentences and common words. Start at A1 level and move up when you make fewer than two mistakes per sentence.
How often should I practise French dictation?
A few minutes every day works better than a long session once a week. Redo the texts you got wrong a few days later.
What does a dictée teach that reading does not?
It makes you choose the spelling from sound alone, so it shows you the silent letters, accents and agreements you have not mastered yet.
Apostrophe· reads you a sentence, corrects it word by word, and explains the exact rule behind each mistake.
Try it free