French orthography is quite consistent: a same spelling will almost always result in the same sound so if you know the spelling to pronunciation rules you can know how to pronounce most of French words (unlike English, e.g. -ough words) Check the chart in the Wikipedia on French orthography. There are link to corresponding IPA with audio so you know how they're pronounced. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_orthography More on reddit.com

Was a French teacher working exclusively with foreigners so I can add my two cents :) People who learn French usually tend to focus too much on individual sounds. I'd advise focusing on prosody, the melody of the language. French sentences follow a very flat pattern, with a very slight rise in the tone at the end of each group and a drop at the end of the sentence (with exception of yes/no question and few other question, who have a sharp rise at the end). Ma soeur aime manger des pommes. Ma soeur very slight rise on seur aime manger very slight rise on -ger des pommes (drop on pom) The slight rise is more of an advanced thing, but the drop at the end is really important. I like to say that in French, the grammar is highlighted by the music. Another thing with French sentences is that individual words tend to be rammed into one another. People learning often think that native speakers speak too fast. Most of the time, they speak at a very normal speed, but the boundary between words is hard to make out, as the last consonant sound from a word will carry over to the beginning of the next. Je pense à toi will be pronounced je pensa toi. Last useful trick : there are a lot of sounds in words that are not pronounced in every day spoken French. Happens a lot to the letter 'e' je vais à la boulangerie would be pronounced jvais a la boulanjrie. mr_wowtrousers spoke about the shadowing thing. Very efficient. I would advise getting one of those Pimsleur thing. They are horrible to learn a language alone – they mostly train you to face very specific situations and you feel like a moron when that situation is not exactly what you were trained to deal with, but they will do wonders to your pronunciation, especially if you keep in mind those few things. Oh, and my best student ever was adamant that wearing a beret at all time really helps. More on reddit.com

I found knowing IPA (the International Phonetic Alphabet) was a great help in the beginning. After you start to get an idea of the orthographical rules, like -en- usually being [ɑ̃], then you can dispense with it. As for actually learning how to pronounce the language, knowing a bit of phonetics would help. So, knowing the parts of your mouth and the way your tongue moves in them. Knowing how to make a nasal vowel, which is to lower the velum while you're making the vowel sound. Or to make the sound of French r, you bring the back of your tongue back to your uvula or just swipe the back of your tongue against your velum. I'm a linguistics student and I find this sort of knowledge to be by far the most important I ever learned. After a certain point, you stop intellectualising and training to speak French, and you unconsciously pronounce French without thinking all the time about where this goes and where that goes. I also found these to be magnificent: http://www.youtube.com/user/frenchsounds http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hI2Pso1dDjM Bonne chance! More on reddit.com

I don’t believe there is a standard sentence like that but you could make one up. Example: il est parfois important que notre chauffeur prépare de bons pneus lorsqu’on patrouille les rues très huileuses de Grenoble et Rouen. Google's pronunciation is very accurate. I think it contains every possible sound or combination that would be difficult for an English speaker to pronounce. More on reddit.com