IS THIS THE EASIEST WAY TO LEARN TO SPEAK FRENCH WITH CONFIDENCE IN JUST HOURS? (French With Michel Thomas Complete Course CD (Audio CD))

Member Name: thealchemist

Product:	French With Michel Thomas Complete Course CD (Audio CD)
Date:	03/10/05 (1178 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Simple, fun, easy to follow, suitable for absolute beginners or the more experienced

Disadvantages: Costs between £50 and £70 depending on where you buy it

Why do you want to learn French? Is it for a pleasure trip or holiday across the water to visit the fabulous cities of our European cousins? Perhaps you are off on a business trip, have French clients or would like some French clients? Maybe you have French friends? Maybe you just like the sound of the language? Or perhaps you have other reasons...

Whatever your reasons for wanting to learn French one thing is for certain - you want it to be as easy and as fun as possible and with the least amount of hard work. Right!

How do you like the sound of NO TEXTBOOKS, NO TRYING TO MEMORISE ANYTHING and NO HOMEWORK TO DO? Yes? Well that's what appealed to me too!

So how does it differ from the other French courses available? You have just 8 one hour CDS to listen to. On the CD you have Michel (the teacher) and a couple of complete beginer students. Michel gives you an enormous vocabularly of French words in one fell swoop by telling you that over 60% of the words in English come from the French. Which means that you already know thousands of them already. How's that for filling you with instant confidence?

Without giving too much away, take for example all the words in English ending in "able" eg comfortable or table. According to Michel they all come from the French - the only thing that is different is the pronunciation. When you know the correct pronunciation you have an instant vocabulary that you don't need to try and remember because it's the same as English. Michel teaches you all these other similarities and their correct French pronunciation.

Michel then gives you (and the two students on the CD) a few new words with an easy way to remember them by creating an association in English. This was the key for me! For example the verb "allez" which means "to go" Michel points out that it is similar to the English word "alley" so you can remember it by thinking "allez - as in TO GO through the alley".

With the new words he asks you all to string those words together to make a sentence. The idea is that you then pause the CD, work it out for yourself and say it aloud. Then you unpause the CD and listen to the students have a go.

Personally I found it easier and more of a challenge to not bother pausing the CD but instead to try and shout out my answer before the students.

I noticed that the students sometimes get it wrong and it is clear they are absolute beginners - this just makes you feel even more confident when you get it right.It's quite amusing when Michel gets all irritated when the one student doesn't do as she's told and he has to tell her off for "trying to remember"

From there each lesson adds a few more words (with appropriate English associations)and Michel asks you more and more complicated questions using a combination of all the words you have already learned. The incredible thing is that it doen't feel like you're having a French lesson. In fact it doesn't feel like any kind of learning I've ever done before. It just feels like 4 people having a chat.

I have a couple of French friends and I was honoured when they commented on how good my pronunciation was. This is because Michel tells you exactly how French people speak in conversation and just as not everybody in England speaks the "Queen's English" neither do the French. One example in use is "je ne comprend pas" (i do not understand) if you were in a normal French lesson you would probably be told to pronouce each word exactly, whereas the French would make it more like "je-n comprend pas" it is only a tiny distinction but one that makes a big difference.

In a nutshell:
I enjoyed learning French with this CD set and I believe you will too. I gained permanent results very rapidly and as with most things in life there is a reason why a Ferrari costs more than a Fiat. I believe the price clearly reflects the quality. I've even gone out and bought the Italian CD set too.

Summary: Makes learning French an easy and fun process with no remembering, textbooks or homework