Michel Thomas Speak French For Beginners: 10-CD Beginner's Program (Michel Thomas Speak...)

This product lives up to its title - you will be speaking French by the time you finish listening to the CDs. And listening has never come so easily (outside a real classroom, at least). The recording features Michel Thomas working with two students - one with a little more experience in French than the other - but neither with much more than yourself. While listening, you not only pick up the information imparted by Michel Thomas, but you also have a chance to learn from the mistakes of the other two students. By the end of the course, you will a basic vocabulary and a grasp on the fundaments of French grammar. And all this without the intimidation of being face to face with an instructor!

However, there are a few qualifications. First, the course is a little light on vocabulary. It does give you the tools to enlarge your vocabulary considerably, but this expansion consists largely of learning words such as "condition" and "politique" - no great feat. Lacking is any introduction to numbers, colors, days of the week, body parts, and other words which are both essential and completely unpredictable based on their counterparts in English. Second, if you are complete beginner, you may wish for more discussion of pronunciation. The students' pronunciation is hit or miss, and the course would never end if Michel Thomas always stopped to correct them. Thus you must have a good ear to tell, for example, that the letters such as "r" and "u" are pronounced differently in French than in English. Third, even after faithfully soaking up every point of vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation offered in this course, you will still have a rather limited knowledge of French. Most likely, you will not be able to follow a conversation or a television or radio program, and reading the most elementary French books will require a dictionary. Thus "Speak French for Beginners" truly represents a beginning in learning this beautiful and fascinating language.

So why the five stars? For the price, there is nothing more effective. The method of instruction literally speaks for itself. Also, the course is efficient in that a great deal is taught in a relatively short time. Finally, in addition to vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation, this course offers something much more lasting: the confidence to keep learning. So try "Speak French for Beginners" and get inspired!

I just wanted to put my 2 cents worth in on this method. Our response to different learning methods is by nature, variable.

Although I think that Michel Thomas' method is extremely useful, it is not meant to be a complete "catch-all" course to fully learn the language by. Much reading and studying of grammar is necessary to learn any language.

Where Thomas excels is in very helpful tips by which to remember words and certain grammatic rules. They are often tips that you will never forget. (Example: in Spanish...."think of a 'female river' in the woods....ria, and add that ending to the verb to convey would, e.g. gustaria=I would like, or it would be pleasing to me).

I don't know what Mr. Thomas' original language was, but he certainly spoke English with an accent (?German). I found him quite easy to understand in his French and Spanish pronounciations...but perhaps that's where some of these negative reviews are coming from ("not real French"). Rubbish. It's a good method. He was a great teacher.

I want to continue, but I have a problem. I couldn't get through the first CD, because he is so positive with the man and so negative with the woman. Does he reproduce that pattern on all of his CD's? Please don't tell me that the woman just isn't as good. He could have selected a different woman.

Michel Thomas Speak French For Beginners: 10-CD Beginner's Program (Michel Thomas Speak...) We've tried several French learning programs including Rosetta Stone French and the French version of "Speak in a Week." Michel Thomas is superior to both. While Rosetta Stone uses photographs and native speakers to develop vocabulary, we didn't learn verbs or sentence construction. Speak in a Week provides phrases and short sentences that tourists might find helpful ("Where is my luggage?"), Michel Thomas emphasizes the similarities between French and English (60 percent of the nouns are the same with the exception of suffixes and accented syllables). He also provides simple rules to help the beginning French speaker ("The final consonant is silent except for those under the CaReFuL rule, i.e. in words ending in C, R, F, and L the final consonant is sounded."). You'll find that you need to listen to the each CD three or four times, but it is amazing how much you can retain. It is a confidence builder for beginning French speakers.

This has to be the best learning tool available for French. Michel Thomas has a very unique approach to teaching and I have found it to be extremely succesful. My husband and I decided that we would learn French as a family. Neither one of us had ever taken any classes before and after only half a lesson my husband, and two young children, ages 7 & 5, were all speaking full sentances! I was amazed! At first my husband and I were skeptical, but within minutes of beginning the lesson, Michel captivates your attention and before you know it you are not only speaking french, but putting together sentances without even thinking about it! I would highly recommend this course to anyone. My 7 year old son absolutely loves it and asks every night to complete another lesson!