SmartFrench Audio CDs Beginner Level

I certainly would not call this a beginning level CD. It starts right in with advanced level conversations, offering no information on vocabulary or verb conjugations. I've had seven years of French study, but I bought this "beginning" level to brush up on my French for an upcoming visit to Provence. The one helpful thing about this program is that it does show you what to listen for in native french speakers. I would definitely not recommend this CD to someone who is a BEGINNER.

I enjoy this program very much. It's interesting and fun to listen to, and effective in getting you to understand actual spoken French. I bought this because of all the positive reviews, and they were right. This is a wonderful product. I find that I really like using it, and it's very effective in getting me to learn French when I do. To me, that means it's a good teaching method. I highly recommend it.

I would highly recommend this product, IF you have taken at least some French before. It is a great tool for learning "real" French (aka, how the French speak, not classroom French). Great buy!

You'll notice that the most exuberant reviews for this product come from people who have studied French previously or who are concurrently studying other courses (such as Pimsleurs, like me). That is the approach I would recommend -- with SmartFrench as a supplement. However, I'm sure you could use this as your sole primary course -- as long as you grasp it's counter-intuitive nature.

It is not a "survival" course which teaches you the basic phrases to get you thru your upcoming vacation in France. This is a foundation course to be used near the start of the long process to language proficiency.

Instead of a truckload of individually-translated words with guidelines to string them together, this centers on a series of recorded extemporaneous conversations by the narrator and other French natives. A booklet has an English translation of the conversation but with almost no word for word translations. In other words, you're given the gist.

In effect, this duplicates your experience as an infant when you absorbed English from the people speaking around you, getting meaning from the context.

But before you hear the actual conversation, the narrator (a native Frenchman) does something very clever. He recites the upcoming dialog veeerrrry sloooowly -- sounding it out so your mind can tune into to the exotic sounds of French -- sounds you could hear as infants but which were discarded as you mastered English. Then he recites again while you repeat after him, training your vocal apparatus to approximate those exotic sounds.

These exercises may account for those who here said that they began hearing the French speech more clearly -- altho they didn't necessarily understand all that was said. I can testify to that. It has happened to me.

Altho the dialog is written out in French, you aren't to read along until the third go thru. When you do, you'll quickly notice that much of the written form is glossed over in speech (but then so is English), so you learn not to rely too much on the written language if conversational skill if your goal.

I don't yet know if you can develop the skills to extemporize in French from this course alone. There are a few reviewers here who claim to have done so, but it isn't clear whether had the benefit of other courses, too.

I know of a couple other language courses that slow down the speech, too. One is a survival course with a limited number of phrases (google for 'languagesonthego') and the other teaches vocubulary ('Before You Know It'). I can't comment on their worth. But from my exposure to SmartFrench, I think that it will give you a solid grounding if your goal is mastery of conversational French -- or even the less ambitious one (mine) of ignoring the subtitles when watching French movies.

FYI, there is a survival product called SmartFrench For Travelers that I'm not familiar with.

I've been studying French for the past 3 years and until recently had to turn the French sub-titles on in French movies to read what they were saying. This past summer my husband and I took our dream vacation to Paris and I was so disappointed! I couldn't understand anything! I thought maybe I was just nervous but now, after discovering SMART FRENCH I realize what I was missing -> practice with the language AS IT IS SPOKEN! That's what SMART FRENCH provides. In the beginning of any training, the material can be intimidating but that's because there is no context to hold it in. With repitition, the context builds and soon the curtain parts and clarity comes. Viola! You will understand! It's like the sun coming out. Excellent program. I highly recommend it if you truly want to understand French when it's spoken and want to speak it yourself...with confidence.