Description:
"La pieuvre est sous le lit." While this phrase won't get you around the streets of Paris, you will undoubtedly find Instant Immersion French Pro to be full of fun examples and illustrations that cement your learning. (And if ever an octopus does actually appear under your bed, you'll be prepared.) Instant Immersion French Pro gets you off to a great start with your French-learning endeavors. This seven-CD-ROM set offers a wide range of learning tools that accommodate many learning styles. With so many discs, we were surprised to see a quick installation. The discs offer the Tell Me More software (four discs), a French vocabulary-builder disc, French Plus, and a bonus audio CD. The three content discs in the Tell Me More series--beginner, intermediate, and advanced--jump right in with language lessons, games, dialogue practice, speech recognition, and grammar. Not a stitch of English is to be seen or heard, even on the beginner disc. We started by checking out the demonstration, which was, in a word, annoying: no non-audio option was available, the presentation was about five minutes long, and it looped, not allowing us to exit. But after charging into the program itself, we were impressed with the creative presentation of learning tools: against the backdrop of a film set, students can take part in "scenes" of dialogue, video, or exercises. The technical options were plentiful as well, allowing us to turn off speech recognition (if you don't have a mic, or don't care to do that), change text size and audio quality, and set a number of other preferences. The games were fun, although a bit challenging without any knowledge of French. The Tell Me More series does offer a number of learning tools that aren't immediately obvious: right-clicking on words and phrases brings up pull-down menus that offer needed translations and pronunciation guides. Also, we found the speech recognition to be a little overly critical. However, the "report card" at the end of a lesson gave us a nice sense of progress. The other two learning discs--a vocabulary builder and French Plus--seemed like the place to start with our foray into French. Through picture association and memory games in the vocabulary builder, we quickly got into the sound of the language. The French Plus CD-ROM also offered picture association, plus interactive activities. This disc goes into greater depth than the vocabulary builder, through 22 lessons ranging from the simple names of nouns to more difficult grammar topics. Comparing this package to other language packages out there, we found the interface inviting and the activities engaging. We recommend this for learners at any stage of their French education as a valuable resource. --Emilie Herbst
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