French with Michel Thomas

Apart from my native language, which is Polish, I speak five languages. I wasn't born multilingual. I have gained proficiency in French, Russian, German, English and latin (translation competence) by means of many different learning methods. Since I am rather average talented student as far as languages skills are concerned, it took me several years of truly hard work to master these languages. However, the most important with languages is not aptitude but DETERMINATION.Michel Thomas method is certainly THE BEST. Thanks to the years of his multilingual experience, this unique charismatic man (read about him!!!) provided us with his fantastic method of learning languages. It is impossible to learn languages JUST from book. Unless one lives in the country that uses the language one learns, one needs to learn through LISTENING in order to be able to pronounce correctly and express easily oneself. Michel Thomas method provides you the foundation of the language you aim to master eventually. My only regret is that it is ONLY introduction to the language targeted for the very beginners. In order to achieve at least advanced level one would need to have not 8 but 300 CD's like that!!!STRONGLY RECOMMENDED FOR BEGGINER'S AND ELEMENTARY LEVELS!!!

After taking an adult course in French at the Walt Disney Studios and studying 52 lessons on tape with another series, I still didn't grasp the concept of French like Michel Thomas explains.He uses mnemonic devices to help you remember words such as explaining where the root of the word originated. He also explains guidelines to go by and you can apply these rules 100% to other sentences. A light bulb went off for me when I understood the concepts. I've never been good at English grammar but have a very clear understanding of French sentence structure and how the verb conjugation works now...and he makes it easy and fun to learn!! You want to listen to more. I wish he had intermediate and advanced courses. I'd buy them in a second.After listening to 2 CDs in French, I immediately ordered the German ones as well. It helps if people have had a course in pronunciation first before buying the CDs.The only drawbacks are that the female student is REALLY annoying...she sounds like she smokes about 5 packs of cigs a day and has lost a huge amount of brain cells because of it....Also, he doesn't get into the past and future tense as much as I would have liked....BUT the program is so good and so worth it, you can overlook this after awhile.Thank you Michel!! You saved me!!!

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.

After attempting to learn French with numerous books and recordings Michel Thomas came to the rescue. This is the most relaxed, enjoyable and effective language method ever created. Michel teaches two students (on the recording) along with you and the results are amazing. You learn to think before you speak and it all makes sense in an amazingly short time. I listen to the CDs every night before I go to sleep. I hope he follows up these excellent CDs with a book to continue the learning experience.