Product Description

This exciting new Easy Learning language course allows learners to take on board all of the French they will need while abroad without the need for thick textbooks and complex grammar. 3 audio CDs and accompanying colour booklet make language learning fun, fast and flexible. The 3 audio CDs guide learners through a series of 12 short units. Each unit introduces 5 new key words or phrases before expanding on the basic vocabulary with practice activities, memory tips and culture and etiquette advice. An accompanying 48-page colour booklet provides full transcripts of the CD conversations as well as helpful hints to guide the user through their learning experience. Unit 1: Hello Unit 2: Excuse me Unit 3: Where's the bar? Unit 4: Over there Unit 5: What would you like? Unit 6: Have you got any!? Unit 7: Can you help me? Unit 8: I want to go to! Unit 9: Have you got a room? Unit 10: It hurts Unit 11: I want to make an appointment Unit 12: What's it like?

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3683 in Books
• Published on: 2008-07-07
• Format: Audiobook
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 3
• Binding: Audio CD

About the Author
A well-known figure in the field of language learning, Rosi McNab has produced bestselling courses and materials for Collins, Heinemann, Pearson Education, Hodder Education, BBC and Goethe Institut. Her hugely successful and ground-breaking books are currently used in primary and secondary schools across the UK and abroad.

Customer Reviews

Limited Language
This Collins contribution is not a complete course in the French language but it is authentic and it does everything it claims - it provides sufficient to let visitors to France ask for things, ask for information, ask for directions, ask for assistance etc. - and to understand answers to questions over a limited range of subjects. However it is not merely a collection of phrases, but is based on dialogues with alternative approaches to support understanding.

Within its limited applications the course is designed to strengthen learning as it proceeds from Unit 1 to Unit 12 on 3 CDs with options for 'the basics' or 'taking it further'. Overall the course spans less than 4 hours but there is encouragement to repeat key words and phrases and to reinforce dialogues. The 12 units are on average each split into further half-dozen subdivisions. With explanations via an accompanying booklet this both eases progress and assists in allowing that progress to suit different individuals.

The course builds on a characteristic of language whereby actual words convey less than 50 percent of communications, with the circumstances, tone of voice and facial expressions, gestures etc. making up the rest. Emphasis is on reiteration and introduction of alternatives,and reliance on on a proportion of what needs to be grasped to comprehend. A negligible niggle is at the course language to often be formal - 'je vous en prie' - but then the French are so much more formal than Brits. Perhaps also the numerous varions are sometimes overdone - 'le voila' opposed to 'la bas' or merely 'la' - yet this underlines the extent of undertstanding via a varying volume of French.

Having a French mother equips me to comment on pronunciation of the spoken French and to assess accents and accentuation as impeccable and deserving of a 5-star rating. Within its limited range the course overall could rate 5-stars, but it is not - and does not pretend to be - a full language course. I am willing to award 5-stars on a value for money basis, but somewhat reluctantly I award only a limited 4-star rating overall.

Good but limited.
Having learnt French from the age of 11 to 15 and forgetting it all by the age of 30 I wanted to brush up on my basics, I figured the easiest way would be to put this onto my iPhone and make it more usable than being limited to being near a CD player. I found that the booklet itself that comes with the three discs to be as useful as the discs but is easy to misplace due to its small size.

I feel that this is ok as a refresher course but probably quite good for complete beginners. Having already learnt these basic phrases I found that the CD's really weren't what I was expecting and similar things are now available straight onto iPhone / MP3 Players.

If you are completely new to the French language this is a good place to start out, you will hear good French accents and pick up the basics in hours, although there are plenty of other ways to learn the same basics the price tag is great.

Very Beginner!
This is a pack consisting of 3 cd's and a booklet which has the same content as cd's in written form. It is very beginner's French. I took French for 2 years at school and found it covered a lot of things I already knew. Because of that I found it a little patronising which is why it got 4 stars.

These CD cover:
Hello
Excuse me
Where's the bar?
Over there
What would you like?
Have you got any?
Can you help me?
I want to go to...
Have you got a room?
It hurts
I want to make an appointment
What's it like?

Each track starts by giving you the keywords (it doesn't give you a chance to practise them straight away which I didn't like.) It then goes on to play some dialogue using the key words and explain what they're saying. Next it lets you take one of the parts in the conversation, it tells you in English what to say, then gives you a chance to say it in French before repeating what you should have said. Finally each unit recaps the words and asks you to pause the CD and try and remember them all.

I did like the way it was set out on the CD but the booklet wasn't really helpful since it was basically a repeat of the CD so as I said in title only buy this if you have no experience of French.

A good place to start!