Customer Reviews: Read 3 more reviews...
 Excellent Method! October 5, 2008
After many hours of internet research, I decided to go with this French learning method. It is great! My son and I spent about 15-25 minutes a day with this book and CD (he actually loaded the CD on his Ipod).
We were able to understand some spoken French and communicate in French when we went to France last year. Of course, when we are communicating in French it's more like speaking in a "little kids" way because it is not our first language. But, we were able to communicate! All French speaking people that we encountered in France were very helpful and patient with us. BTW, we spent four weeks on our own and not part of any tour groups.
Its really effortless! June 25, 2008
If you want to learn a language by yourself this is an excellent method. You can invest just 15 to 30 minutes a day and you will learn without effort (I have tried it, it works, you have to be constant and patient). The idea is to hear simple conversations, learn the language in the structures that you would need in a conversation, and do some practice. By repetition of this structures in dialogues you get a sense of the language without learning grammar. Grammar is there but in some footnotes, you will learn it but as something secondary to the practice, just as we do in real live with our native language. Be sure to use the CDs too.
Highly recommended!
Amazing way to learn french! March 26, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
In my attempt to speak and understand french, I bought this book after I came back from France where i first heard about it. I have been reading it and listening in my ipod every day going to and from work. I have to say that this book is very good in giving you the essentials and taking you a step further. Every 5 lessons or so it has a review section and at the end of the book it shows a grammar summary which I found very helpful. The audio has good quality and the authors try to make it fun in every audio conversation. I would say that the only downside would be that some of the phrases (very few actually) I encountered in the book are not currently used anymore in France (according to what some french people told me). Also, I wish the method would actually introduce me to the future/conditional/imperfect tenses directly before it presents it in a dialogue and makes reference to it as being that tense. However, the grammar summary at the end of the book will definitely answer your questions on how to use these tenses.
Excellent. Second best way to learn French January 6, 2007
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
If you want something that isn't Michel Thomas but you still want to learn French, this is your answer. It works extremely well and is very easy to use properly.
ever wondered why the French can speak English so well? February 22, 2005
27 out of 27 found this review helpful
I recently travelled to Paris, having crashed through Michel Thomas and done most of the Smart French CD-ROM (which I can recommend if you have little time to prepare). These helped a great deal.
While browsing through the bookstores there, I kept bumping into the Assimil packs - the Smart French method appears to be a bit of a modification of the "natural assimilation" technique of these French-origin "with ease" series. "L'anglais sans peine" is one of the biggest selling items in French books, and it's how so many French people learn how to speak and to understand English. (They published their first edition back in 1944, according to the antique dealers on ebay.)
Why? Because, if you take 20-30 minutes each day for a few months (preferably five), you'll find that the series is fun, and you don't have to strain to memorise. The most important thing is to do a little each day in the first two weeks, and you build on it from there. After two months now, I'm beginning to understand (listening-wise) internet radio news from www.rfi.fr and so on. So far, this is the most thorough and most fun.
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