Footnoted Newbie United States Joined 4858 days ago 35 posts - 42 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French
| Message 1 of 5 17 April 2012 at 8:45pm | IP Logged |
I used what was for me a good combination to learn a decent bit of French for a recent trip to France (to wit, Assimil's New Fenech With Ease, followed by all three levels of Pimsleur French), and I must say I was able to ask almost any tourist-type questions I pleased (although I could not understand half of the responses), and my pronunciation seemed to go over pretty well judging from the often rapid-fire responses I would get. Anyway, I am back from my trip, and I want to continue with my study of French, preferably using an audio-based program similar to Pimsleur that I can use in the car. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!
Edited by Footnoted on 17 April 2012 at 9:03pm
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Michael K. Senior Member United States Joined 5730 days ago 568 posts - 886 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Esperanto
| Message 2 of 5 17 April 2012 at 8:49pm | IP Logged |
You can try Michel Thomas. Some regard it as his best course (he also did Spanish, German, and Italian).
Get the Foundation and Advanced courses. They cost about $100.
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napoleon Tetraglot Senior Member India Joined 5017 days ago 543 posts - 874 votes Speaks: Bengali*, English, Hindi, Urdu Studies: French, Arabic (Written)
| Message 3 of 5 17 April 2012 at 9:21pm | IP Logged |
Michel Thomas is a very popular course.
You can probably use the FSI French Basic Course without the book. Although, using the book will probably be easier.
BTW, had you finished the active phase of Assimil NFWE before your trip?
Edited by napoleon on 17 April 2012 at 9:24pm
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Footnoted Newbie United States Joined 4858 days ago 35 posts - 42 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French
| Message 4 of 5 17 April 2012 at 9:44pm | IP Logged |
I got through through about 2/3 of the active phase but the problem was I had also started Using French so it began to be entirely too much new material without enough repetition of the old material. Plus I could not construct a sentence for the life of me. So I dropped the rest of the active phase of NFWE and UF entirely, and then began Pimsleur and was able to virtually fly through all 90 lessons at the pace of one a day, doing each new lesson once at night and repeating it once the next morning on the drive to work. Without Assimil I would not have been able to get far at all with Pimsleur; Assimil helped me visualize what was being said in Pimsleur. On the other hand, I can't for the life of me figure out how one can pick up on what's going on with something like "J'y suis alle'..." using Pimsleur alone, whereas with Assimil to draw on, I knew exactly what the "y" sound was in there for, and Pimsleur taught me to construct and verbalize sentences using it.
Edited by Footnoted on 17 April 2012 at 9:44pm
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sctroyenne Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5392 days ago 739 posts - 1312 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Spanish, Irish
| Message 5 of 5 17 April 2012 at 9:44pm | IP Logged |
A new course could certainly help but it seems that you're more than ready to integrate some (or lots I
should say) native audio. You could try some audio books, some podcasts (for learners or for natives)
and for the car you could maybe try to get audio from other sources onto CDs or MP3 (such as radio, a
French audio track of a DVD, etc).
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