Customer Reviews

Follow Francis : Learn to Speak English (includes workbook) [VHS]

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At last! An educational video designed with the VCR user in mind! This video isn`t just an entertaining group of skits - it has interactive options that you control with the remote. After you've worked your way through a lesson listening and watching - and I shouldn't say work, because it's so easy and rewarding - you can rewind a lesson and practice speaking. To do this, you use a cue on the tape to pause the video while you formulate the sentence that's coming. Once you've spoken out loud and heard the original on the video, you have time to pause and correct yourself, without having to rewind the tape. It's a simple concept but one that I`ve never encountered before and one that is extremely effective. This is certainly better than watching videos that are really just conventional lessons or footage of situations with no chance to get involved. Other features of this video that enhance the learning experience are the variety of background music, the ironic approach, and the practicality of the language. While these aspects all contribute to excellent lessons, the character in the video is certainly the main teacher. It is through the character's actions that you understand the language. He is an affable, but inept mime who goes through a series of ordinary actions while the narrator clearly enunciates instructions, questions, and comments. The actor is so talented that you, the viewer, understand much of the new language you're hearing. The workbook that comes with the video is really well constructed too and gives you a chance to review and extend all that you've learned. All in all, this video package is an exceptional language experience.

Hello Teachers. Hello Students. Do you have the classroom blahs? Do you need new learning activities? Do you have Follow Francis? You don't? Don't buy another activity book. Don't videotape another TV program. Don't record more radio newscasts. Instead, "Follow Francis". You'll like it. You'll learn a lot. Designed for beginner to low intermediate language learners, the FollowFrancis language kit is a pedagogical delight. It's breezy, cheeky and funny. The themes and situations are universal, the writing is simple and energetic, the lesson delivery is professional and accessible. And it's available in four languages: English, French, Spanish and German. I am a teacher and writer in Montreal. I began using "Follow Francis" about two years ago with my immigrant classes at an adult education centre in Montreal. It was an instant winner with those students. Since then, I have been using it regularly and successfully with all my basic education students.The multimedia instructional kit contains four teaching components: a video, a printed student exercise book, a cassette tape, and a teacher's guide. (Teacher guide and audio cassette available separately). All materials smoothly integrate the four language elements, then spice them up with hits of light-hearted humor. Students particularly like the video's strong visual and verbal components. The cute but perpetually confused main character, Francis, plays a klutzy "everyman" character to great effect.Our laughter dissolves classroom cultural barriers faster than March sunshine melts snow. Children also respond enthusiastically to the highly graphic skits and lively action. I have lent the video to a French Canadian neighbor whose 5-year-old loves the sad-eyed, silly mime. Used together or alone, each component contributes to the overall effectiveness of this learning resource. Both the video and the tapecassette have the same 20 vignettes about familiar themes; the sketches follow a pedagogical progression from listening comprehension to speaking.The writers built up the themes using controlled grammar and high frequency vocabulary and expressions designed to help learners develop a native-like language base. Each of the approximately 4-minute sketches is different and all of them can be used to reinforce grammar or theme-based curricula. The sketches explore universal subjects in ways that stimulate thought and discussion. The Teacher's guide and the student exercise book, have been designed to encourage student participation by extending the theme ideas and bringing in other vocabulary and grammar structures. Repitition, imitation, roleplay, cued responses, trivia questions, skits and dialogues are some of the guide's suggested activities. The professional production standards of this kit make viewing and using a pleasure. Francis is an appealing character, played with zest and sympathy by a skilled mime artist. The male and female narrators enunciate clearly, the background music dramatizes the action, the pacingand sequencing enable learners to both repeat and anticipate lines.This learning resource delivers the goods in a way that allows teachers to focus on their students' needs and that helps students to learn more easily. Individual learners can use this language aid to learn at their own pace. And it's a lot of fun for everyone.

This video is a great purchase. At $1.50 per lesson, it's value packed. Each lesson has 20 - 30 utterances with basic verb tenses and ordinary vocabulary. Each lesson is accompanied by two pages of exercises in a workbook where you rewrite the script yourself and use the language in new ways. Each lesson deals with a common topic using language you encounter every day. Each lesson uses humour and theme music to relax you while you learn and start speaking. In fact, on the video jacket you'll find a series of steps that explain a good process for efficiently learning the language in each lesson. These steps take you through from watching to listening to speaking. The only problem with this video is that it's so much fun to watch and the language starts making so much sense that you may want to do a sneak preview of the whole thing before you actually back up to the beginning and start following the directions. But when you do, you've got at least a solid hour's lesson for only $1.50 an hour.

Everybody knows that learning by doing is the best way to learn. Doing something is better than just hearing about it or watching it. Many language learning resources use tapes that you listen to and a few use videos that you watch. Like these other resources, this video has you listening and watching too, but it goes a step further and has you actually doing - doing actions and speaking the language of what you're doing. It seems to me that when I started Lesson 1, my mind reverted to some younger, receptive mode and automatically began to put together whole phrases and sentences. And the sentences weren't just statements - they were questions, commands, and exclamations as well - structures that I had studied with no small amount of frustration before. As I worked my way through to Lesson 20, I didn't always jump up and do all the actions (my two young boys sure did), but my body simply took my mind through them while I sat on the couch. Then, later, when I reviewed the lesson, my body not only responded to the language but actually prompted my memory of the words. It's all rather magical but it seems to me that it's also the way we learn our first language - by doing it, by matching actions and words, and by sometimes using those actions to prompt the words. I wish I'd had this video years ago and I wouldn't have wasted so much time and experienced so much frustration. Although I'm still focusing on my French, I know that this video is available in three other languages - Spanish, German, and English - and I must say that I'm curious to experience it in these languages too.

I bought this Video set based on the glowing reviews found here at Amazon. when I received the video which I bought for my Spanish speaking wife, I was disappointed at the presentation.
I think the video is better suited for children and not adults.
My wife also did not like the presentation and pace of the video, she tought it was boring and un-interesting. The US
State Department Rosetta Stone software is much better and
you get a lot more even though it costs more. I would not buy
this for anyone, but maybe it will work for some.