Customer Reviews

Basic French: CD/Book Package (LL(R) Complete Basic Courses)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This book encompasses a good range of vocabulary, but consists of a person reading phrase after phrase after phrase, without translation (making it nearly useless for a beginner who wants to learn in his/her car), and read more slowly than actual French speakers speak. If you want to drill, drill, drill with the accompanying book in your hand, this is for you! If you want to learn French as it is spoken, look elsewhere. In my opinion, this course is a waste of money.

The "Living Language Complete Courses: Compact Disc Edition" are great to use in your car CD player or Discman. These CDs are available in French, Spanish, Italian, German, and Japanese. The "French Complete Course" is very basic instruction: the repeat-after-me words and phrases that one learns in a high school or university language lab during the first year or two of study. A small coursebook comes with the three CD set that has the transcript of the spoken material on the CDs, which is only in French. There are forty "lessons" in all; many of these lessons include translations of the French words and phrases, and there are some short quizzes you can take. There is also a small French-English/English-French dictionary in the set, and it has over 15,000 words in tiny print.

This language course on CDs is not an intensive immersion-type instruction in French. However, it is the best way to form and improve on your French accent and sentence intonation. French is a difficult language to pronounce correctly and repeated drills are necessary. So if you are not in France, or another French-speaking country, and you have no one with whom to practice speaking French on a regular basis, these French language CDs will help you gain or regain confidence in your conversational skills. This boxed set makes a nice gift for someone who is planning a trip to France. (Living Language also makes audio cassettes in the languages mentioned above plus Hebrew, Portuguese, Russian, Hungarian, Korean, Polish, Mandarin, Czech, Arabic, and American English.)

This CD set has enough variety to keep you from getting bored, and enough drill so that you'll start to be fluent with certain recurring useful phrases. The pronunciation is excellent and clear, and the interaction between the listener and the CD is very well paced. I wish I'd had this series in conjuction with my high school classes...it would have made a huge difference in being able to speak with confidence. I've tried a lot of French tapes, and this is the best I've found.

I had three years of french in high school, but like everyone else, I don't remember much of it. This course is well designed in that the first cd provides a basic review, so that the words I hear sound familiar again. The second and third cds provide more of an indepth lesson on simple vocabulary and verbal grammer. The exercises in the book allows the listener to practice both the pronounciation and sentence structure of the language. The only complaint I would have is that the speakers on the cds sometimes recite too fast, and the words slur together, making it difficult for someone not proficient in the language to understand.

As a total beginner to French, this CD really helped me get a grasp of the sounds and how to make them. I was able to learn basic french and be able to speak it so the french people I spoke with were able to understand me perfectly. I was able to learn the basics so that I could travel in france by myself without addressing the natives with any english (the french HATE that!) Though my vocabulary was limited, the cds helped me learn to hear what the native speakers were saying so that I could understand them as well which helped me pick up more french on my own. I only spent 2 weeks in france, but I was complimented on my good accent on several occasions. I even translated a bit for another american who didn't know any french! There is lots of repetition on the CD, so this is an excellent tool for beginners to start with. I begins with vocabulary lists, then moves on to simple sentence constructions and builds on them gradually, so you know what you are saying. Must be used in conjunction with the book, however. I spent about 15 minutes in the evening with the book, and listened to the CD on my way to and from work the next day (approx. 30 minutes each way, so lots of vocal practice). I only got a little less than 1/2 through all the lessons, but it was still an enormous help. Highly recommended! It really added an extra dimension to my travel!

I moved to France and I did not know one word in French. I had some books with me and the Living language set. In the end it was the only thing I used and the only book I was learning from. It helped me learn the basics of the language without me having to put too much work into it.

I feel this book, used in conjunction with the CD, was organized to make it easy for a beginning french student. It repeats expressions and words in different contexts which truly helps the learning process. Later on in the book I found it offered more ways of saying the same thing than I cared to learn.

Basic French course was in great condition, but was missing one of the CD's in the set.