Customer Reviews

French: Start Speaking Today! (Language 30 Series)

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4 star:		(1)
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2 star:		(2)
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The two tapes are about 50 minutes each. Divided into general expression ( Salutations), personal needs ( shopping, hotel, restaurants....) tine and numbers, communications (@ customs, post office...), transportation, emergency, and finally polite expression.
The tapes will state the English phrase first then repeated in French twice with enough pause to allow the listener to repeat them. The book has three columns: English, pronunciation, French.
I believe this arrangement is very helpful. sometimes I get bored with remembering all the food @ restaurants. As the first reviewer said there is no grammar, this book is to learn phrases. I knew French, and I liked those tapes as they helped me to recall some expressions and practice them.

The previous reviewer doesn't seem to think this set has value, but it does. Actually, I don't have the french, I have a different language from this series. I have many books and cassettes for the other language I study and from those I primarily learn the language. But I love the language 30 cassette and booklet for reviewing. As my pronounciation and listening skills improve, I periodically pop in the tapes to see how I'm doing. When I started I always had to look in the book as I went. Now I can keep my eyes closed more and more, and peek less and less. For this purpose it is perfect that it is a ton of vocabulary, little by little, not interactive conversation, as the other reviewer complained. Anyway, I am going to buy the french now to supplement a course I'll be taking soon...

I was disappointed in this cassette program. I had previously used the Language 30 Greek program, which was outstanding. It broke down the individual sounds of the language and gave a pretty good idea of how verbs are conjugated and the differences between singular and plural nouns and adjectives. It was excellent preparation for a trip to Greece. I had assumed that all their language programs were as good. I was wrong in this case. Perhaps the company wanted to show off their speaker, the famous Monsieur Charles Berlitz. But what M. Berlitz says on these tapes is just the same old "bonjour" and "merci" that you can get anywhere else. It contains a lot of phrases that could help in specific instances, but the Greek tape gave a clear idea of how the phrases could be adapted to many situations. These do not. I also think it would have been more helpful if there had been more than one speaker. The best language learning tapes have both a male and a female speaker. Here we're stuck with M. Berlitz. These tapes are also much briefer. The Greek tapes averaged 22 minutes per side. These tapes average less than 15 minutes per side. This edition of Language 30 French has been discontinued, as it is obsolete. (It speaks of currency in francs, rather than Euros and I would imagine that M. Berlitz is long dead.) I am writing this review only for people who, like me, still use cassettes and have been pleased by other Language 30 Products. Language learning has come a long way since this old dinosaur was made. There's a reason why this is out of print besides technological advances. R.I.P.

Language/30 "Learn French Today" teaches you nothing about basic grammar, and instead provides the listener with a phrasebook you could buy in a travel shop. Instead of learning how to say "I would like" and "She likes" and "they are bringing me this" etc. etc., all it teaches you are questions. "I would like to see the menu" and "can you direct me to the toilet?" are such phrases that you would learn upon listening to the two tapes provided, and such is the dynamic nature of the French language that there is a multitude of grammatical aspects to the language. One cannot pick up French just by listening to questions.

So in short - don't buy these language tapes 'cos they're a waste of money and time. If you want to learn the language, take a class. That works.

But still, je ne parle pas bien Francais!!!!!