Customer Reviews

Instant Immersion French Deluxe vv2.0

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

 

 

You will like their approach to teaching you a new language. I cannot say that it is better than the Rosetta stone but it is closer than what the price difference would make you believe.
Like any other package, it is not going to teach you the material by osmosis, you are going to have to put the time and effort to go through the CD's and the exercises, but if you do, you will get your money's worth.

I purchased this product looking for a cheaper alternative to the more expensive language software. As a student with absolutely no previous educaion in French, this program did not help me at all. It starts out right into full dialogue-with no introduction to vocabulary, grammar, or even the alphabet or basic pronunciation. There many activities that are difficult to do, one of the first is when you must listen to several words and phrases in rapid French and type them in-with no introduction to spelling or listening to the most basic phrases. I found myself doing the activities just to get through them, and I REMEMBERED VERY VERY LITTLE. What kept this from a 1 star were the grammar explanation features, and conjugation tool. Immersion may be the best way, but try a much cheaper or even free way first (I recommend french.about.com!) , but don't waste money on an almost useless product.

At first, I thought that the program was a complete mess and very disorganized, but when I got to the next step, I realized that I was learning because I knew all of the answers to the questions in the exercises. This is a great way to learn. I know no French at all. It helps big time to click the American flag and see the side by side translations. The important thing is that if you've never studied a romance language before, you must take the time to read the grammar explanations. At first, you'll think they are idiots for teaching u single words by throwing whole sentences at you, but when u get to the next exercise, you realize that because of that format, you have already learned about vocab AND sentence formation at once. This is really great stuff, but you must take the time to explore it, move your mouse around and make sure there is nothing else available for you to click to get more info. There's lots of helpful information, but you have to play around and see what each button does. If you plan on buying another language from the same brand, keep in mind that they are not all set up the same way. Japanese may be set up very differently from French. I highly recommend this. I found it easy once I played around with it. The only reason it is not a 5 star is because it could use a little more instructional help for those who are a bit computer shy. I'm not even sure if there's a customer service number provided either.

I hated this sofware from the beginning. Right of the bat the directions are very poor, and the activities are much to hard for someone with no French background. This is not a program for beginners, so do not buy unless you have a background in French (even if the box might tell you otherwise). I worked through the first CD (supposedly 100 hours worth of material), and I feel as lost as confused as ever. Do youself a favor and invest in a better program.

This program did not have some of the features I would have hoped for with a language immersion program. It would have been nice to have photos to connect with words and/or phrases. A workbook or printed companion book to the audio CD's would have also been helpful to reinforce word recognition. It is also difficult working with the voice recognition technology. Even when the speaker sounds as if they are perfectly copying the coach, the program doesn't mark it as sounding correct. If you are an auditory learner and listening to CDs appeals to you, there is much you can gain from the CD portion of the program. The computer program has some activities I enjoyed, but others that completely frustrated me. For one, you cannot type in your answers but have to click on an alphabet list to spell out the words you want...time consuming and frustrating. This program would be good for the beginning French student who wants to practice what they're learning in school. It's probably also a good review for the person who wants to brush up on their French if they've gotten a little rusty. I don't think anyone would be able to reach fluency using this program by itself.

I realized it too late, but this product is not for someone who has no knowledge of French. I bought this hoping to learn a little of the language - how to say "hello" and "I love you". It was a big disappointment. Perhaps it good for those who are taking a classroom teaching course, or know a smattering of French.

Give you many options as to how to learn French. A good feature is that when you are repeating the words and sentances, it shows you just how close you are to the proper pronunciation. I do word by word pronunciation practice,whe show you where you inflection is on target and where and how it needs to be improved.

I lived in west Africa and learned French over there through college courses, private tutoring, and just plain immersion. It has been a few years and I am soon returning to Senegal, so I thought I would use this to brush up a bit since it claims to cover many levels of difficulty. I was a bit shocked at the beginner level.

While I had no problems, I can certainly understand the frustration of the debutants. Without prior working knowledge, this would be seriously frustrating. It lacks a framework that might enable you to experience success at early levels.

It really is a TRUE IMMERSION EXPERIENCE in that there is just a lot of dialogue with little explanation unless you seek it out manually. Immersion is a frustrating experience - trust me. It is how I learned, but I will not be using this software any further. This might work fine in a classroom setting, but it does not stand on its own very well.

Another point is that while I was successful in the exercises due to previous knowledge, it is rather dry and I got bored pretty quickly. I realize quite well that true language learning is just plain work most of the time, but the lack of explanation in this made it very easy to walk away from. If you're after compelling learning, I would say, "Go fish."

Are the creators of this software FOR REAL??? Think you'll learn French with this junk? Think again! The first---the FIRST lesson makes you recognize French SENTENCES you've NEVER even heard before that have never even been explained prior. And get this, some of the menu labels are in French! The help button does not work. You have to exit the the program to get to the PDF help file. I can't even figure out what most of the exercises are for!

Junk!