I sympathize, because I occasionally try to pair program in French, and yeah, it can be a struggle—and French spelling is far more rational than English spellin

I sympathize, because I occasionally try to pair program in French, and yeah, it can be a struggle—and French spelling is far more rational than English spelling, despite the silent letters. But if you're having trouble with listening comprehension, there's a fairly rapid way to improve that seems to work for many people: Watch lots of TV. A couple of years ago, I started buying DVD box sets in French, and just watching entire series straight through (both native French series, and dubbed US ones). My comprehension still isn't 100%, but it got a lot better, and I was pleasantly surprised when I started understanding a lot more people in Montréal, who tend to have strong accents related to European French speakers. As a general rule of thumb, to improve a specific language skill (reading, listening, speaking), you're going to have to actually do a bunch of it. European programmers read a ton of English, so they can usually read it just fine. But unless your country shows a lot of subtitled US television, you're going to have much weaker listening skills.