Customer Reviews

Living Language French Verbs: Skill Builder

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
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In a world of very expensive French audio and book courses, for example Pimsleur French at over $200.00 a section, almost $700.00 or more for the entire course, and a huge number of mid priced sets, many of them excellent, the Living Language French Verbs Skill Builder is absolutely the best $25.00 you will ever spend on ANY French learning tool.

It covers all essential topics, has a friendly conversational style, using many of the same voice actors as Pimsleur and Barron's courses, and employs realistic real world statements and dialogs to highlight and explain the use of verbs in ALL tenses. The only drawback is that it is still on cassette tape, not CD Audio, but hopefully Living Language will remedy this soon.

If you're beginning with French this is an invaluable asset, much more realistically useable than the massive "every French verb on earth" books of conjugation tables. If you already have some basic French skills you could use this set alone to significantly improve your speaking and conversational skills.

Having tried several other methods, I found this course the absolute best for reviewing French verb forms in a non-boring fashion. The tapes are well-organized and intelligently done. They do move on at a swift pace but that is exactly what one needs to brush up on a prior knowledge of any language. Normally I resist hearing anything but the foreign language on an audiotape course (the constant interruptions into English usually tend to confuse more than they clarify). In this case, case, however, the English is non-intrusive and allows one to use the tapes without necessarily consulting the written guide. I use it while I'm cleaning thehouse, driving, or doing some mundane chore. Highly recommended. Hope they create a CD version of these tapes soon. (For a more sit-down mode of learning, check out the spectacularly interesting, interactive Learn French Now! software available for both Macs and PCs. Innovative and intelligently-done software that is also fun- in short, a great companion to this series.)

Listened while driving. Was pretty much perfect for learning grammar and making good use of my commmute time. Started easy, but ended up giving a comprehensive understanding. My level: took french in school years ago, have maintained an interest in french cinema ever since. You could probably call my french capability lower level intermediate conversational (not fluent).

I just purchased this set - 4 audiotapes and a book. This set is not good for a beginner, but very good if you already know some French. I did two years in college a while back and now I'm prepping for my first trip to France. I like these tapes a lot. They are professionally narrated with very clear, distinctive speech and excellent sound quality. The pace is very good with appropriate pauses for the listener to repeat. Although the focus is on verb usage and conjugation, they throw in lots of good vocab words.

This is an excellent book especially for a subject as dry as verbs conjugation. The tapes are excellent and cover all the material included in the lessons. It is a useful book for both beginners and advanced learners.