Planning a vacation or taking a class? This 5 CD set offers an in-depth learning system to achieve French fluency. Features "real-world" conversation simulations, speech recognition, and record/playback!

Average Customer Review: ( 16 customer reviews )
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I didn't get much use out of most of the functionality in this product. But I do like the speech recognition very much. The program has a meter that gives you an idea of how well you're pronouncing words. It's hard to get it pegged into the green (at least for me), but when I do, I believe that I'm pronouncing the words pretty well. In fact, I took a level 3 class at Alliance Francaise here in Chicago, and was as good as anyone at pronunciation, and was complimented by my teacher, despite being behind the rest on most other aspects of the language. This was entirely due to working with the speech recognition feature in an earlier version of this product.

I think it's particularly helpful in light of the fact that language labs seem to be out of favor -- at least they didn't use them at the Alliance Francaise. There aren't many sources of help available for learning correct pronunciation.

If you're expecting this package to teach you French all by itself, you're going to be disappointed. But if you're serious about learning how to pronounce things, this is a great tool, and for [the money], I think it's a fantastic deal.

If anyone from The Learning Company reads this, I'd like to suggest that they bring out a new product focusing completely on pronunciation and vocabularly. If they had a product with maybe 10,000 words, and solid tools for learning the subset of the vocabulary you needed, I'd pay a couple of hundred bucks for it, at least.

16 of 16 found the following review helpful:

Anglophone in Quebec loves this programJul 09, 2002

I've lived here over half my life and don't speak french, not because I don't know what to say, but because I've always been afraid that it wouldn't sound right. This program is great for learning the correct pronounciation, and the conversation feature helps with thinking fast. My kids (ages 6 & 8) were not doing so well in french class last year but they've been practicing with this program and gaining confidence. It's a lot of fun to use, especially the speech recognition meter, we take turns and compete to see who can get farther into the green area. Looking forward to having a french conversation with my french husband.

My only problem with this program is that even though it's new, ...the online programs that are supposed to be downloadable to your computer are no longer available. Not saying that the CD's don't have plenty to keep me busy but I feel a little [left out] because they discontinued them so soon.

20 of 21 found the following review helpful:

We'll always have Paris...Jan 27, 2003
By ewomack "ewomack"
First one negative: The Learning Company does have to get better at listing what platforms their software really works on. Version 8 does not run on Windows 2000, Windows 8.1 has problems with XP, but works fine on Windows 2000. If you're planning on buying this software, be careful about which version you buy.

That said, this software is a good learning tool for picking up French. It will not be enough on it's own (what one tool ever is for learning fluency in a language?), but it's an incredible supplement. You see and hear French being spoken in a number of situations and by a number of different people, all with different accents, ages, and occupations. A book will not give you this (though a book will be better for learning the rules of grammar such as verb conjugation). Pronounciation is particularly hard for english speakers learning French (I speak from experience). Having the word spoken repeatedly while printed on the screen is a boon for figuring out how French is supposed to sound (again, a book will not do this as well).

The program relies on rote memorization for success, which is unfortunately one of the menial and grudging realities of learning any language. Each vocabulary word is tied to a picture (e.g., 'ici' has an "X" with an arrow pointing to it), and the drills rely on your ability to interpret these pictures. Most are not difficult at all to figure out, but some can be ambiguous. Each lesson moves from a list of vocabulary words into these drills, and then into a conversation usually between 2-4 French speakers. Once you have these phrases and sentences down, there are more drills. Lastly, each lesson includes games: "Go Fish" (against a strange horse/dog creature with a southern drawl) and a crossword puzzle. You can play the games at any time (though it's harder to know this in version 8.1 than it was in version 8.0). Finally, you have a conversation with a French speaker via your PCs microphone. It's as close as you will get to having a native speaker on hand for practice, though it has the limitations of any computer program (this part of the program has crashed on me, but not frequently enough for me to give up on the software).

Lastly, when you speak into the microphone the computer will judge your progress on a continuum from 'tourist' to 'native'. This is a little tenuous, and I would encourage people to pay more attention to the playback of their voices rather than worry if they're attaining 'native' status (I have also heard that sometimes these programs don't work well with native speakers - a French-Canadian relative of a friend of mine once used this program, and was consistently told he was a 'tourist').

Overall, it's a very good tool to help you along with learning French. It will not learn the language for you, but it will be a valuable help.

10 of 11 found the following review helpful:

FRUSTRATINGFeb 06, 2002
By Coventry Merwin
This program was extremely frustrating to use. I found the voice recognition cool until I realized that if I said something that sounded even similar to the word I was supposed to be speaking. it would be "recognized". The online portion of the program where you are supposed to be able to set up study programs, etc., wouldn't work. The website would only load intermittently. This program does not save your work, so after spending 45 minutes going through a lesson and accidentally hitting the "back" key, it was as though I had never done the lesson. I couldn't get back to where I was. I was very unimpressed with this software. There is also no real "guide" to speak of. No handbook on the software, just an outline in the program that doesn't really answer questions. I spent several hours trying to figure this thing out and got nowhere, and I spend my day working on computers. Definitely not recommended!

6 of 6 found the following review helpful:

I think it is a great software!Jun 03, 2002

I found this software very helpful, I was very hapy with the purchase!
It comes with 4 CD for PC,
1 audio CD (which has just 2 Lessons and I do not think it is so helpful, because all the pronounced words you can find anyway in the software)
1 WORK BOOK - which I found great.
The best thing about the software is that it IS organized and follows the book step by step. All the words (from the workbook) are pronounced in the software - there are some video clips, you can record your voice and compare with a native speaker, you can play games and puzzels and OF course - you can take tests!!
There are all answears for the tests and exercises (at the end of the workbook) and the GRAMMAR explanations are great!
I really like this software - I even looked for buying another one from the same company (for intermediate or advance students).

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