Learn a Second Language

This review is a comparison of three very different recorded French courses – Pimsleur, Behind the Wheel French 2 and French with Michel Thomas Intermediate/Advanced.

I have tried and failed several times at learning a foreign language but, when I started working for a French company, I decided to try one more time.I was attracted to Pimsleur because of its promise to focus on the basics, and I was not disappointed.

The approach taken by Pimsleur is to introduce you to a word or phrase in English and then have it repeated several times by an expert speaker of French, punctuated with long pauses so you can listen and repeat.In this way, the course takes you through typical basic situations – going to a restaurant, finding a doctor, working in an office, making travel arrangements, buying items with Euros, etc.New words and concepts are gradually introduced along the way and each session loops back to remind you of things you learned on earlier CDs. I especially liked the great effort that is put into making sure you clearly hear each word, even to the point of painstakingly breaking down words and phrases into separate syllables.This is especially important for English-speakers who may have trouble with French pronunciation.I also liked the fact that the course never dumped a lot of things on you to learn at once – for example, numbers are introduced a few at a time in natural situations such as telling time or counting change.The same is true of days of the week and months of the year.This is a very intelligent way to help people learn large categories of words.

Each learning unit (French I, French II and French III) consists of about 30 CDs, each of which is about ½ hour in duration.There is also reading material so that the student can see in writing the words and phrases that are being said out loud on the CDs.The expectation built into the Pimsleur course is that you will listen to one CD a day and then move on to the next.For me, I found that I often had to listen to the same CD three, four or more times before I felt comfortable moving on to the next.For that reason, it took me over a year to get through French I, II and III instead of 90 days.But by the time I was through, I had a basic grasp of the language and had even gone to Paris and managed my way through a couple of simple conversations in French.

As another reviewer said, however, you can’t expect miracles with this course.You can take all three units and go to a French movie or watch French TV, and still understand very little.It prepares you for basic survival in a French speaking country – not much more.The Pimsleur course includes very little technical explanation of what you are learning or the rules of grammar.A small irritant is the fact that the 30-minute CDs are not broken into separate tracks.But overall I was very pleased with how well the Pimsleur technique helped me remember words and basic sentence structure, mostly in the present tense.

For me, the biggest negative is that there is no Pimsleur French IV!So once I got through the first three courses and decided I wanted to keep learning via the Pimsleur method, there was nowhere to go! That’s why I was forced to switch to a different instruction method, so I purchased the Intermediate versions of both Behind the Wheel French and French with Michel Thomas to help me get to the next level.

I found that Behind the Wheel French is a very different course from Pimsleur.It’s basic philosophy is that you should learn by listening – as you did when you were a child learning your native tongue – and not be instructed on lots of grammatical details.So, a lot of the material consists of what I’m tempted to call an “audio phrase book,” with an English speaker saying something followed by a French speaker saying the same thing – there’s not a lot of repetition or “looping back” as with Pimsleur.You may hear a word or phrase and then never hear it again, so you don’t get the reinforcing effect.Also, I could not always understand the native speaker’s words and there is often not enough time allowed in the recording for the listener to repeat.But there are some real special nuggets in Behind the Wheel French.In particular, I liked the story-telling segments where they first slowly go through a simple story told in English, with each sentence repeated in French.Then, the native speaker retells the entire story in French at a normal pace – this is great for educating your ear to understand French as it is heard in normal usage.There is a similar very nice feature where the speaker will go through the same narrative in the present tense, the past tense and then the future tense – very useful to hear exactly how words change depending on the tense.Behind the Wheel French also includes some practical information about social situations in France, some slang and colloquialisms, and LOTS of vocabulary.

French with Michel Thomas is yet again a very different course – it is serious instruction for serious students.That said, Michel Thomas does everything he can to make it easy, including his opening admonition against workbooks and homework.The format consists of Michel Thomas (a very charming and witty guy) working with two students who are probably no better at French than you are. Thomas is very relaxed and is a superstar at coming up with clever tricks, tips and concepts to help you remember how to navigate this language that has 18 tenses. Lots of things that I could not figure out from the other courses are thoroughly and clearly explained by Michel Thomas.

So which course would I recommend?My experience with Pimsleur convinced me that it is the best foundational course.It will give you the basics in a very thorough disciplined manner that you can easily follow – expensive but worth every penny. Michel Thomas is a must for anyone who is seriously interested in becoming proficient at this language, because he is extraordinarily skillful at getting technical grammar concepts across without actually calling it grammar. Michel Thomas is the next best thing to having a private tutor and his course complements Pimsleur very effectively by providing lots of explanation. The Behind the Wheel French is great for improving your ear and building vocabulary, but it is hard to imagine that anyone could become conversational in French with this program.

Click Here to see more reviews about: French I, Comprehensive: Learn to Speak and Understand French with Pimsleur Language Programs [Unabridged][Audiobook] (Audio CD)

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