French in Action: A Beginning Course in Language and Culture, Second Edition: Workbook, Part 1

This is the best French language course you can find. If you want to use it for self study you do need to purchase the workbook, audio tapes, and study guide along with the textbook. The textbook is designed to be used with the PBS series, French in Action. The good news is the television series can be watched at http://www.learner.org/resources/series83.html for free. To get the best out of this course you need the workbook, and the workbook needs the audio cd's. The material on the cd's is different than the audio on the television program in that it includes exercises on pronunciation, listening and observations on grammar. To make sense out of all this material you need the study guide. It's the road map to the course and explains how to use the other material. This is especially true if you are using this as a home or self study course.

"French in Action" is a complete, college-level language course intended for students who have aspirations of fluency. The course consists of five components: video tapes (or DVDs), audio tapes (or CDs), textbook, workbook and study guide. All the components work together and are necessary for the course to be effective. The course utilizes an immersion method, meaning that after the first couple of lessons, everything except the study guide is in French. In spite of its high profile and ready access on public television, I don't think it's a good course for beginners. It moves quickly and would probably be best for someone with previous study in the language. The course would be nearly ideal for a college-level student with at least a year of high school French under their belt. It's a full meal. There are 52 lessons divided into two, 26 lesson parts. Each part can be purchased separately, but any way you slice it, the entire course is a considerable investment in both time and money. Working about an hour per day, it's paced to be handled at the rate of about a lesson a week. At full speed, you might be able to finish it in a year. Because most of the lessons involve some kind of conversational practice, the course is best taken with a partner or the help of a tutor. Self-study students might be tempted to eliminate the conversational and writing exercises, but doing so would be a mistake. Those exercises constitute at least half of the value of the course. One of the real strengths of "French in Action' is that it puts an emphasis on the French language the way the French actually speak it, which is quite a bit different from the way American phrase books tend to teach it. Right from the start, you're listening to the language at full speed in all its idiomatic glory. If you're anything like me, you'll have the sense of always struggling to catch up. But, I like the fact that the early emphasis is on listening and getting a sense of the rhythm of the language. Younger students will probably like the fact that after the first several lessons, they will have learned at least a dozen ways to insult their friends. One of the weaknesses of the course is that the audio tapes really need to be used along with the workbook. Hence, it's difficult (though not impossible) to use them in the car during long commutes. Don't expect a standard presentation, because the material isn't handled anything like standard French textbooks. Tenses, for example, are introduced so matter-of-factly that the very first words you utter are in the future tense. And there is no emphasis at all on word-for-word translation. In fact, quite often you're listening to idiomatic phrases in which the individual words when analyzed don't make much sense, but the meaning of the entire phrase when spoken in context is perfectly clear. "French in Action" is a real grown-up language course for students with mature study skills and sufficient interest to get

I have tried several self teaching french course books, audio tapes, etc. None of them comes close to French in Action. My french language skills have jumped several levels after I started studying this course. After having finished about half of this course, I was able to get by quite well in French during a recent trip to France. This course teaches you French and France, its culture and its people like no other.Although all the video tapes, audio tapes, workbooks seems like a very expensive deal, there are ways to do it cheaply. The video section is broadcast year round on PBS channels, as well as available online at the learner website. I skipped the audio tapes since most of the excercises in the workbooks can be done without audio tapes and furthermore if you watch each video several times you have already understood the conversation. Then all that is needed is the textbook and the two workbooks. It can take a long time to complete the 52 lessons, but language learning is a long process. French in Action does make it very enjoyable.I don't think this is a beginner level course, though. Its probably useful to do some other basic course for a couple of months before starting on this one.

I've tried a number of different language course in a number of different languages over the years, but this is far and away the best. It's an immersion course, which means the videos and the audio-tapes are completely in French. It helps at the start if you've done a little French before, but even if you haven't, the extra effort in the early sections pays off handsomely. The videos are an essential part of the whole package, though they seem to be fairly widely available on public TV. (Here in Australia, ABC TV shows them nationwide, continuously, as part of the Open Learning programme). I strongly recommend buying them if you can, otherwise you are going to have to tape all 52 programmes off-air - you need to watch them over and over for maximum benefit. Each episode consists of 10 minutes of the story (a charming and quirky American boy meets French girl in Paris soap opera)and twenty minutes of explanation by Professor Capretz, an equally charming and quirky instructor. The whole is interlaced with hundreds of brief extracts from French film and TV. You watch the video several times, then work through the audio tapes to improve your own speaking, pronunciation and comprehension, read the text, then do the exercises. It might sound repetitive (all language learning is), but the story does hold your interest right to the end. I did it as a two year course with Open Learning in Australia, through the University of New England, and was sorry when it ended. This is a good way to do it, but it will work fine for a self-learning course. It's fairly costly, with textbook, workbooks, study guide and audiotapes, not to mention the videos, but you won't find a better course for learning to speak French or understand it from radio, film or TV. The reading side has been strengthened in the second edition, but to get to be a fluent reader you will need extra reading outside the course.One of my teachers ( a French national) criticised the course for cultural bias (a little upperclass and American) and he has a point, but for a rapid and enjoyable path to fluency, this course can't be beaten.

This is an amaizing course in how to communicate in French. Communication is not only the words in the sentance but how they are constructed and the subjects that evoke a response. The course is fun, albeit corny but amusing, story of an American boy in Paris who falls for a French girl. Through their adventures one is introduced not only to the language but to the subjects dear to the French heart. I have heard some of the conversations almost verbatum between French people during my 6 years in France. I still listen to the tapes from time to time to memorise sentences that work at engaging french people. Any of the conversations on food are a winner along with things like 'la belle pierre de France'. Its amaizing what cords these subjects and the way they are presented in the course ring a chord with the French. The people who put this course together understood the differences between the American perspective and the French perspective and were able to emphasize or play with these differences to point them out in the course. I wouldn't consider buying any other method until I had this one.