French With Michel Thomas Complete Course CD Hardcover – Unabridged, 1 May 2000

Allow me to get straight to the point. If you are serious about learning French, Spanish, German or Italian, and you have the money to spare, I would advise buying the full 8 hour course straight away. If you buy the 2 hour introductory course first, it will just be a waste of money, because I can guarantee you you will want to buy the full course after listening to it.I'm a Spanish graduate and so Michel's teaching style really intrigues me. It is truly unique and extremely effective. You will find that you will remember almost all of the vocabulary without much effort - compared to a very low retention rate from traditional courses.Michel focuses entirely on the spoken language and some people may find themselves fighting this method at first. That's only natural, because we are trained in school to rely on visual aids to remember things.... vocabulary lists, flash cards, videos, OHPs.... but when you consider how you learnt your mother tongue, you'll realize that our brain is wired up to learn a language in a auditory way. He spells out some of the trickier words, but for the most part you need to think of yourself as a child and absorb all of the information eagerly, not worrying about spellings. You can learn the spellings later, after you have finished the course.... just as a child learns to read and write his native language after he has learnt how to speak it.The format of the course is great; it's very informal. It is a recording of Michel teaching two students who, like you, have little or no prior knowledge of the language. You will feel like you are the third student in the class. It is vital to pause the tape/CD when Michel asks how to say something. Take as much time as you need to think of your answer... he will never ask anything that has not already been fully explained.As a language graduate, I have tried MANY textbooks, tapes, courses, videos, classes.... and I can guarantee you that this is the most effective, natural and stress-free approach to language learning that you will ever come across.At the end of the eight hours, you will find that you have a good, solid working knowledge of the structure of the language on which to build.As for further study, I would advise trying to get hold of a second hand copy of Margarita Madrigal's Magic Key to French (it's out of print now). It uses the same sort of methods as Michel, but you can see the words written down and can practise your own writing skills.Enjoy!

Michel Thomas’ teaching style is certainly different. And if you’re used to CDs that take you through a series of set situations – “in the restaurant”, “in the hotel”, “in the office” etc. – or CD-ROMs that include structured tutorials of French phrases and verbs, then you’re in for a bit of a shock. Because, sounding a bit like a cantankerous and meandering grand-father who’s had a couple too many glasses of wine, his style is to dispense with grammatical niceties, books, notes or even a logical sequence to his teaching, and to simply bully and cajole you into speaking conversational French properly.Structured through questions and answers so that you’re the invisible third student, sitting in there alongside a fairly competent chap and a pretty hopeless lady (bear with me, I didn’t write the script), this is about as close to “one-to-one” tuition as you can get. And it works! Sure, you get annoyed with their faltering repetition but the trick he’s using (which several other reviewers miss the whole point of) is that you end up second-guessing what they should say and, as a result, subconsciously drum into your brain the correct answer. Brilliant!And, alongside this subtle trick, he uses several others to get you there as fast as possible… for example, he explains exactly why & how a huge number of English words are virtually the same in French, just pronounced differently, giving you an instant and relevant vocabulary of over 1,000 words. Don’t kid yourself that it’s a magic solution to speaking French but it’s an extremely useful aid to fluency that a lot of other learning programmes, quite unbelievably, fail to explore and a perfect example of why his teaching method is so simple and effective.No single course can make you fluent in French but if you know the basics and want a much better understanding of what’s said to you and what you need to say to be understood then it’s an invaluable teaching aid. As he would ask, “now how do you say, I want to know how he does it?”…. not sure? Then this course is for you.

Tidy pack! I haven’t used it yet but I already have this set and it’s the finest wonderful easy joyful easy to learn way to learn French! Buy it you won’t regret it! Any age it’s truly perfect!

I bought this in tape form quite a few years ago.I found it really good especially the introduction course. Word association learning . I've started back with French and bought the CDs this time as tape worn out ,also Paul Noble course , which is so similar.Ok Michel Thomas tape . He' has two beginners with him , the third CD really gets confusing and annoying. The woman student stumbles along most of the time , it's annoying and boring in parts.Paul Noble has a French speaker with him , it's so much better. I like the way he does interactive work ... ordering a meal . Reserving a hotel room , buying tickets at train station.Paul Nobles ,course I would recommend.

I work for a company that employs a number of foreign employees. I have been there some time now, but didn't think of learning another language. Silly me. I have had this course for maybe about three weeks now and I wish I had started it sooner. It's a grate help in understanding how the grammar works between the two languages or sometimes don't. These CDs' are well worth the money.