Lesson 7.6 - recognition issues with one colloquial phrase

I seem to find a phrase in every lesson like that.  No mater how I say it, I can not get a 100% rating.  I just move on.
 

Thanks - had the sneaking suspicion I was not alone in finding this! I usually just listen to my own playback and if it sounds good enough, it is. (I also have the advantage of my wife being French, so can get a check without the technology problems in the way).

Salut MCK et Meages !

Indeed, that's a good suggestion, MCK: if you feel the voice recognition may not be registering something properly, listening to your own recording and checking that it sounds as similar to the native French as you can make it can be a good strategy - and can also help you to analyze and improve your own pronunciation. You can also simply move on and come back to the phrase after you've done a few more lessons, to see if your improving pronunciation has enabled the voice recognition to register what you're saying. A third strategy is very similar to what you've mentioned, MCK: to say the exact phrase (keeping contractions like t'as rather tu as) slowly, with a small pause between each word, so that the voice recognition has a chance to register that these are separate words. This doesn't sound very fluid, of course, but it can actually be helpful for really working on your pronunciation of individual French sounds.

For this particular phrase, I have had success with the voice recognition using the third strategy - but of course, the type of mic that you are using can make an important difference with tricky sentences like this, and using this third strategy can also be frustrating. I will pass this phrase on to be looked at, to see if we can make the recognition work more smoothly.

Ultimately, I would say that for phrases where the voice recognition seems to be the issue, following the first strategy (i.e. listening to your recording and determining that it is as natural as you can make it and that it would be understandable) and then moving on is best. 

I hope that that is helpful!

À la prochaine,

Liss

One thing that sometimes works for me in this situation is to listen to the phrase or word from another source. The two I like the best are Forvo and NaturalReader. Forvo is a wonderful collection of native speakers speaking words and phrases. They often have several native speakers for the same phrase and identify where the speaker is from. By listening to these pronunciations and comparing it to my recording I often can find what is causing the problem when I couldn't using the Rocket French speaker (of course, usually the Rocket French speaker works well).

NaturalReader is a commercial software company that makes a variety of text to voice products. They have a free online version that limits the size of the document to be read and the length of time you can spend using it a day. For the purposes of listening to phrases from Rocket French I have never found these limitations to be an issue. For French the free version has seven voices to choose from - Four French and three Canadian. What I really like about their program is that you can change the playback speed. I most often use the setting -2. I've had very good luck with this program helping me get to where Rocket French gives me 100%.  The Canadian voice feature is also useful because I  live near the USA/Québec border and the French I most often encounter is Québécois (Forvo often has Canadian French speakers as well). 

Forvo can be found at: https://forvo.com/
NaturalReader at: https://www.naturalreaders.com/index.html