Rating: 
Summary: Easy and convenient!
Review: Michel Thomas does a wonderful job teaching you what you need to know without overburdening you in the very beginning. Since completing the course, I feel like I could go to France and actually communicate with people. Of course you can't master the language in eight hours, but (a) you don't need complete fluency to be able to communicate and (b) this course gave me enough confidence and basic skills so that now I feel like I could begin to refine and build vocabulary. This would be a fantastic course to complete before you embark on a high school or college French course, too.
Rating:
Summary: Worth the money!
Review: I am a second year French student and my first year was far from pleasant, to say the least. I used these CDs this summer before entering my second year. I found that I retained things easily, learned a lot of conversational vocab, and it was all painless- there is no memorization to do or homework to be done. Now, I am doing well in French and not afraid to speak up in class (which is taught immersion-style). I highly recommend these CDs from beginners or for a refresher course. It doesn't teach you everything (grammer, etc), but it is wonderful at helping one get over the fear of learning something new. So, if you're willing to shell out the cash, I'm sure you'll think it's worth it. Bonne Chance!
Rating:
Summary: Enjoyable and effective
Review: I had studied french in high school and bought this series as a review. It proved excellent in that regard, moving at a very easy pace. Sometimes the process was a little too slow, but the logical building of knowledge and skill was great and quite easy. I think that although there is much more to learn to be fluent, with this info one could get around and be prepared to handle many traveler situations. This is an ingenious method for teaching language. I bought the Italian version also and recommend them both.
Rating: 
Summary: Inspiring, But...
Review: The foundation of language acquisition is input. Think babies
listening for a year and more before they start to speak. This
program, where you will hear more spoken english than french, is
essentially an amusing cognitive exercise in short term memory.
You will be able to manipulate the sentence structures and verb
conjugations without too much effort if not with ease. The
daunting french pronunciation will appear manageable and the teacher does not demand the perfection of it. There is enough
repetition and overlap of structure to reinforce what you
previously learned. You will think that you will be able to
learn french, that your next trip need not be an exercise in liguistic fear and inhibition. Unfortunately these CDs are
little more than the pep rally before the big game. Acquiring
french is going to take much more input (listening/reading) and much more effort (repetition/meaningful conversation). The lessons you learn with Michel rather quickly fade, though they are inspiring and engaging enough when you are doing them. Be warned: if you don't want to spend eight hours in a very small room with a language learner whose inability to 'get it' will quickly drive
you up one of the nearby walls, stay away from this course.
Perhaps the program's editors wanted to have us think we were
superior intellects. As you wait for her to make her way through
the linguistic minefield you will find yourself thinking of the
additional lessons that might have been fit into the format.
Mercifully her 'airtime' is reduced as the program progresses.
Unless you have the money to blow, save it and go with one of
the longer programs. Bonne chance!
Rating: 
Summary: A unique way to review or learn French.
Review: I enjoyed these CDs. Michel Thomas is interesting to listen to. This product takes a unique approach: you listen to Thomas as he instructs two students in French. I liked it. It wasn't "cold" like many language learning systems are - it was friendly and interesting to listen to, especially when Thomas shared some additional thoughts on the language. It's a little wierd how the guy on the CD caught on a whole lot faster than the woman. It was kind of embarrassing at times. Nonetheless, I liked this product a lot.
Rating:
Summary: Great course, not for beginners though.
Review: I had had two years of French in College and several hours of self study with different book courses.This allowed me to read French adequately but still could not understand or speak the language. The Michel Thomas course is excellent for those that find themselves in this situation, or for those who need to grasp quickly the language for travel or work.
The course will give you a basic, but solid, understanding of the structure of oral French in about 8 to 10 hours of listening, with very little effort.You will need to look elsewhere for gaining vocabulary.
Strongly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: I live it .... so take it from experience.
Review: I am not visiting a French foreign country...I live in one. (Belgium) I have lived in Europe for 10 years exactly this month. I lived in Nederland and Deutschland for most of that time. I attended 3 fun-filled frustrating summers of Deutsch (German) lessons. I passed all my exams and flew past every roadblock they could throw at me. The same went for Nederlands (Dutch), with Deutsch under my belt - I sailed through the Nederlands language exams like I was born to it.
Now ask me if I can speak Deutsch or Nederlands. Sure, but I have a head so full of rules and roadblocks that I am lucky to comfortably conjugate a proper Deutsch sentence over 5 words without trepidation and apprehension of breaking any grammar rules or sounding anxious or stumble-free.
I now live in Bruxelles, Belgique. I have only covered the first four Michel Thomas CDs of his 8 CD course. I will admit that I do have the advantage of a purebred French boyfriend, which, is great for pronunciation aid.
Last weekend, we went to dinner with some of his close friends and working colleagues. Words, terms and whole sentences were coming out of my mouth with little to no effort. OK perhaps there were a few errors here or there. ... but the fact of the matter is, I was "communicating" in Français.
I have passed no complex exam papers or have any notes or textbooks and yet to my own surprise after 2 short weeks, I feel that I am head and shoulders ahead in this game. My main tool has been just a simple dictionary. I have approached this from the stand as a child learns his/her language; personally this has been a great working approach for learning and communicating on a daily basis. A young child cannot read or understand complex grammar rules, yet, somehow a young child with some errors communicates and grows in the knowledge of his/her mother tongue.
I wish I could expound on the circumstance of my total immersed "French" surroundings (work & home)... in a nutshell this time around it's literally "sink or swim". Fortunately, Michel Thomas has been a real rescue boat for me. I'll admit he may not be the whole answer but he has a well thought out and true method of laying a solid base for communicating in another foreign tongue ... and take it from experience "communication" is the whole key.
Rating: 
Summary: 160 word ...
Review: This course is over priced for the number of words learned. There are manyother course that will teach you a language quicker and have a much better value. Learn in Your Car teaches you over 1,800 words... Thomas's course is more like a infomerical for taking his course directly from him.
Rating:
Summary: A great teacher
Review: Michel Thomas is a great teacher. Great to listen and learn in the car. If I had him as a teacher when I was younger I would be fluent now.
Rating:
Summary: Don't have unrealistic expectations
Review: After reading some of these reviews you may be expecting some kind of miracle. You will be disappointed. I give this course five stars, however, because it provides a great deal of information painlessly, in a short period of time. After eight hours with Michel Thomas you will have a fairly solid command of the present tense and personal pronouns. Possesive pronouns are briefly touched upon, with others receiving even less attention or none at all. You will be able to speak in the future tense using aller: to go. "I am GOING TO buy it tomorrow." He briefly touches upon the real future tense - "I WILL buy it tomorrow" - though the coverage is lacking. His coverage of the past tense is bad, at best. He very briefly discusees the imperfect, but not the passe compose. Without getting into grammar, lets just say you'll need the latter in every day speach, i.e., "I SAW him yesterday." Michel Thomas likes to say "Don't say it, think it" which happens to be the exact opposite philosophy of the Pimsleur program. With Pimsleur you learn how to speak without having to think out sentence structure, which is exactly how we speak our native tounges. This course is perfect for what it is, however. No other program, Pimsleur included, will have a total beginer speaking so much in so little time. If you are starting with Pimsleur or another program this course is definitely worth buying. After all, we all want to be able to speak the language we're trying to learn, and this will get you off the ground in a short period of time. I must complain that little emphasis is placed on pronounciation. In fact, no one on the CD is a native speaker. I also have to add that anyone with any experience with the Romance languages - a few years of Spanish, a semester or two of Latin - could probably learn all the grammar taught in this course in about an hour. Don't expect all the complexities of the French language to be made clear after 8 hours. This course is a GREAT introduction, but an introduction is all it is.
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