Customer Reviews

Advanced French (Berlitz Advanced) (English and French Edition)

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The dialogues on the CDs are moderately interesting and useful BUT in order to get the translations, one must download them from a BERLITZ website. Even after accessing the website, I had to call customer service to find where the download was. Ironically, the work book that comes with the CDs has many blank pages at the end. Wouldn't it have made more sense to provide the English translations there than to greatly inconvenience customers by having them search online for the few words that might have been missed on the CDs? It was very foolish of Berlitz to do this.

I've been studying at Alliance Francaise for many years, and this method is usually the method used in most language schools. Since this is advanced, prior knowledge of the french language is required. First, you'll have a conversation and then you'll have to disect the conversation. You'll learn lots of vocabulary and French expressions. The book has parts on setting, grammar, pronunciation and cultural information. The CDs are composed of 1 cd for the conversations, and the other 2 cds for the listening and speaking exercises. I'm already on Level 13 of Alliance Francaise though so I feel that the advance lessons in this book are not that challenging. Also, the other 2 cds for listening and speaking exercises are really more for listening and not speaking. It doesn't ask you to translate English sentences into French. Although it has an activity wherein you'll have to describe things, or explain things, there is no way you could find out if what you're saying is correct. But overall, I like this book because it doesn't deviate that much from the format that I'm used to (e.g. Alter Ego, Panorama, etc..) and also there are lots of content.

I've been studying French at university for 1.5 years. I don't use the book but it's an important adjunct for those who teach themselves. The greatest thing for me are the interesting topics and sentence pattern fragments on the CD's. If one practices them enough they can form their own sentences. The muscle memory built up from saying them along with the narrator whether at home or while driving will aid immensely in repeating the phrases under actual situations. Since I have few opportunities in the States to practice French dialogue, these CD's help keep in memory those hundreds of hours spent in language study. I have been to Paris twice so rest assured that this method works for most people.