Customer Reviews
A fun french class - By: Jill Brooke, 29 Nov 2008 
I liked to take this class. Michel Thomas has a wonderful style. I must say that he is as good teaching you to speak French as SmartFrench is good at helping you to understand French - They are one dynamic duo!
Unbelievably effective - By: R. Jones, 04 Nov 2008 I've just finished listening to thisin its entirety, & it's been absolutely fantastic.
Prior to undertaking the Michel Thomas method, my knowledge of French came from 5 years of itin school quite some time ago (little of which stuck), & bits & pieces I had picked up from family holidaysin France. But looking back, I realise that what these experiences left me with was just a basic knowledge of names for various things (days of the week / numbers / food / items of clothing / very simple phrases) & next to no knowledge of grammar, ie how to actually construct a sentence properly.
Michel Thomas has changed all that - although his course doesn't actually teach you a whole lot of vocabularyin terms of nouns, his ability to get you to understand grammarin a thorough but practical way, is superb. By feeding it to you bit by bit, & making sure you understand what has just been covered before moving on to the next thing, he really builds your knowledge & confidence & has you working out how to say quite complex sentencesin next to no time.
The only negative things I have to say are that the vast majority of what you will learn will be how to say thingsin the present tense & how to ask questions, although there is also quite a bit on the "je vais" method of speaking about the future. Very briefly at the end he does touch on other ways of forming the future tense, & then even more briefly goes into the past tense. But I guess more on tenses is what the Advanced course is for - I'll certainly be listening to that one next.
Also, the female American student on the tapes is incredibly annoying, as other people have pointed out. I tried to tune her out & ignore her most of the time. The other student (the British male) is much less offensive.
Michel says all the way through that you don't need to write things down or try to remember anything, but I have to say that I made notes the whole time - I know that for me personally, writing stuff down helps cement itin my mind. The fact that he frequently tells you how to spell the words he is introducing was a big help for mein this respect.
Basically though, this course has been a revelation for me: I just wish I had been taught French this wayin school...
Great! - By: HGT, 20 Oct 2008 My French was always a bit ropey to say the least, but, if your serious about leaning French, you need just spend 10 minutes a night with this & do exactly what the chap says..... & within two weeks you will have a fairly good grasp.....and its very addictive too. So about 10 minutes, thats all you need....you can easily spend more time than that on the johnin an evening....so do it!.... or even combine the two!
BRILLIANT - By: Barry Loftus, 10 Sep 2008 I learnt more from the first CD than from five years at school. Without doubt this is the easiest & most effective way to learn French. I recently returned from France on a family holiday. I certainly had more confidence than ever before when speaking French.
You are advised to pause the CD & try things out for yourself before the students attempt it, but to be honest you can usually get there before them. I've used the CDsin the car & when out jogging, with no need to pause. If I had to find a groan it would be at the 'not so good' student. Sometimes you get the feeling that she isn't listening & isin her own little world. There are times when I think Michel is thinking the same thing about her.
If you're serious about learning French then this is the only place to start.
A very very clever man indeed - By: J. Kempton, 12 May 2008 Let me start with on a good point & say that michels technique is a true work of art
Its only when you have listened to the tapes a few times(and you will need toin order to completely digest it) that you realise how clever he is at making his point.
It really is as close as you can get to painless language tuition.
When I had ingested this course i was convinced that I could speek fluent french,however it is only the introductory course so you will be needing the avanced course after.Which is also exellent,and much more involved.
Now for the bad bit:
I can not for the life of me understand how Michel could have let the course be published with the female american student!!
SHE IS A MORON.
I have neverin my whole life been forced to listen to someone as irritating as her.i dont even know her,yet i found myself wanting to strangle her.
It is a shame because she did make it hard to listen to after not a very long time.In fact I edited her out of my cds,now the course is more like the Michel Thomas language builder, which I actually prefered,you can only listen to someone elses mistakes for so long before they start to get annoying especialy as you are improving at the same time.
Having said that I still got a great deal from this course & I highly recommend it.
