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Rating: 
Summary: A definite help for pronunciation and understanding!
Review: As a total beginner to French, this CD really helped me get a grasp of the sounds and how to make them. I was able to learn basic french and be able to speak it so the french people I spoke with were able to understand me perfectly. I was able to learn the basics so that I could travel in france by myself without addressing the natives with any english (the french HATE that!) Though my vocabulary was limited, the cds helped me learn to hear what the native speakers were saying so that I could understand them as well which helped me pick up more french on my own. I only spent 2 weeks in france, but I was complimented on my good accent on several occasions. I even translated a bit for another american who didn't know any french! There is lots of repetition on the CD, so this is an excellent tool for beginners to start with. I begins with vocabulary lists, then moves on to simple sentence constructions and builds on them gradually, so you know what you are saying. Must be used in conjunction with the book, however. I spent about 15 minutes in the evening with the book, and listened to the CD on my way to and from work the next day (approx. 30 minutes each way, so lots of vocal practice). I only got a little less than 1/2 through all the lessons, but it was still an enormous help. Highly recommended! It really added an extra dimension to my travel!
Rating: 
Summary: This set has given me confidence in speaking french.
Review: Being a francophile, I have always wanted to really learn to speak and understand french. I had one semester of college french and thought it was impossible. But this book and the CDs that came with it really helped me to learn a great deal of french in an enjoyable way. With this set and a CD-Rom on pronunciation that I'm using, I no longer find it difficult to pronounce certain tricky french sounds and I now have confidence speaking basic sentences to french speakers. I have been complimented on my "good accent" on quite a few occasions. I can also understand many phrases and simple sentences when I watch french films now - which also boosts my confidence. The book does not explicitly teach grammar, and you learn it naturally through repeated listening and speaking. One difficiency of this set is that there isn't any listening comprehension exercises, which is a minor disappointment. Also, I find it helpful to use this set in conjuction with some exercise booklets and grammar books. In summary, you will not be fluent in french after completing this set, but you will be in pretty good shape doing things like ordering tickets, asking for directions (and giving them too), making purchases, etc. I liked this set well enough that I have ordered its sequal - "advanced french"!
Rating:
Summary: Quick and Effective
Review: I bought this product because I found the Spanish one to be veyr effective, and this was no different! Grammar was well explained and the use of pattern phrases gives a good ground on vocabulary and grammar. Towards the end, I found that learning more phrases did me no good, for I could fluently construct sentances with the words I already learned from the phrases. It says you will be able to complete this course in six weeks, with my special linguistic gift, I did it in two. Tis method is quick and painless.
Rating:
Summary: Living Language French Complete Course
Review: I feel this book, used in conjunction with the CD, was organized to make it easy for a beginning french student. It repeats expressions and words in different contexts which truly helps the learning process. Later on in the book I found it offered more ways of saying the same thing than I cared to learn.
Rating: 
Summary: Improve your French Accent . . .
Review: The "Living Language Complete Courses: Compact Disc Edition" are great to use in your car CD player or Discman. These CDs are available in French, Spanish, Italian, German, and Japanese. The "French Complete Course" is very basic instruction: the repeat-after-me words and phrases that one learns in a high school or university language lab during the first year or two of study. A small coursebook comes with the three CD set that has the transcript of the spoken material on the CDs, which is only in French. There are forty "lessons" in all; many of these lessons include translations of the French words and phrases, and there are some short quizzes you can take. There is also a small French-English/English-French dictionary in the set, and it has over 15,000 words in tiny print. This language course on CDs is not an intensive immersion-type instruction in French. However, it is the best way to form and improve on your French accent and sentence intonation. French is a difficult language to pronounce correctly and repeated drills are necessary. So if you are not in France, or another French-speaking country, and you have no one with whom to practice speaking French on a regular basis, these French language CDs will help you gain or regain confidence in your conversational skills. This boxed set makes a nice gift for someone who is planning a trip to France. (Living Language also makes audio cassettes in the languages mentioned above plus Hebrew, Portuguese, Russian, Hungarian, Korean, Polish, Mandarin, Czech, Arabic, and American English.)
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