SmartFrench: Beginner Level - Learn French from Real French People

I took three years of French in high school over twenty years ago, and I recently decided to take up the language once again. I have tried various programs, such as Rosetta Stone, Michel Thomas, and Pimsleur. However, when I tried to have a conversation with native French speakers, I was always disappointed because a) When they spoke at a natural pace, other than picking out a word here and there, I could not understand what they were saying and b) While I could make myself understood, I was told that my sentences were too rigid or unnaturally formal. As far as I know, Smart French is the only program available that teaches the student to speak in a natural and fluent manner. The program begins with an excellent review of French sounds. Then, a series of vignettes are presented in which an interviewer discusses a topic with everyday French speakers such as a model, a chef, an art curator, a metal worker, an actor, etc. The converstations are presented in stages. The first stage, breaks down the sentences into bite sized segments in slow motion. The ensuing stages move progressively faster, until the sixth stage, when we hear the actual interview at normal speed. At first the converstions seemed impossibly fast, but after listening to them a few times, I began to understand more and more of what the speakers were saying. The Smart French course has helped me tremendously in developing an ear for French as it is spoken by real people and in improving my accent. In my opinion, it is by far the best program available, and the best value for the money.

As said before, rather than a French course this is just a complement to your French course, designed to improve your listening and pronunciation skills (don't expect to find any help on grammar, for example). And it does an excellent job at that. To avoid repeating previous reviews, I will focus on describing this product, so you can judge it for yourself. Starting with the content, this DVD-sized box comes with three audio CDs and a booklet attached inside. The CDs are recorded in standard audio format (not mp3), so you're sure to be able to listen to it in your car. The CDs contain an introduction to the alphabet, the numbers and the French sounds, followed by the recordings of seven one-on-one real-life short interviews, hand-picked to fit the beginner level (not for an absolute beginner, though). The booklet contains the transcriptions of all that, including also the transcriptions of the nine interviews of the intermediate and advanced levels - whose CDs are sold with the intermediate/advanced box. It's just that they probably ship the same booklet with both products. Sound omissions are marked in red in the text, while "liaisons" are underlined. The booklet also contains the translations of all interviews into English. After you listen to and repeat the alphabet, the numbers and the French vowel sounds, the first interview begins. Each interview is repeated six times. The first five times are spoken entirely by a male French speaker with clear pronunciation, and the sixth time is the real interview played back for you to listen. The speaker gives his instructions and comments in English. The first time, the speaker just reads the interview for you to listen, very slowly, in the way French people read. The second time you repeat after him, also very slowly without reading the transcript, but this time with the usual sound omissions and simplifications common in spoken French. The third time you also repeat after him, but this time a little faster and reading along. The fourth time is when the speaker pauses to explain and work on a few pronunciation tricks. The fifth time is when the narrator repeats only one or two common expressions spoken in the interview. Although I think this product is really effective and helpful, I didn't give it the full five stars because of the following flaws: (1) The sound chart and recordings don't cover two important vowel sounds that are particularly difficult for foreigners: the sound of OEU in "boeuf" and "soeur", and the sound of UM in "parfum" or UN in "brun"; (2) The recording quality of the real interviews is clearly inferior to that of the studio-recorded French narrator. In the real interviews, not only are there the environment noise and the hissing typical of analog recordings, but also you're forced to increase the volume of your stereo to hear it at the same sound level as the rest of the CD; (3) The French speaker gives much attention to phonetics and sounds, pronouncing words very slowly and clearly, but gives little attention to intonation, which is an essential part of a language's native accent; (4) To better train our ear and pronunciation, it would be helpful to also listen to (and repeat after) different native speakers, with varying accents, not just one narrator. That said, I still strongly recommend this product for improving both your pronunciation and your oral comprehension of French.

I have been using these products for several months AS DIRECTED by their creator, Christian Aubert, and have found them extremely helpful. I've used both "SmartFrench - Introduction to French, Volumes 1 and 2" and also the 4-CD-Set "Beginner Level." What is so amazing about this material is that you truly can learn the language by just listening! If you are planning on a trip to France I would say this is the way to learn. You may not learn to read the language, but you will learn to understand what is said to you and to speak it to some extent, and that is the point. I plan on purchasing "SmartFrench for Travellers" before my trip to get more help in recognizing the written word. Mr. Aubert teaches something that I imagine few other language courses go into--he teaches the contractions that the French use in their conversations. Unless you learn to hear the words contracted (the way French natives actually say them), how can you hope to understand what is being spoken? Mr. Aubert also highlights IN RED the letters that are NOT pronounced in a sentence. (There is a PDF format of "SmartFrench - Introduction to French, Volumes 1 and 2" which can be printed out for your convenience, as well as a booklet included with the 4-CD-Set "Beginner Level"). 'Just listening is the key to your future progress' says Mr. Aubert, and he is right! I find myself (I'm a gardener) out in the yard telling my plants IN FRENCH, "Well, you've got to have everything!" (See "Beginner Level CD 1 - Soundis" and you'll know where I'm coming from;-) It is so much fun to have French words or phrases pop into my head from out of the blue, and I feel like a child learning her first language with ease. If you don't try this material and do it consistently, you'll never experience the joy I'm talking about. Five days a week I spend an hour on my treadmill with my earphones on, and I'm learning a language without the chore of memorizing. Imagine that! Pas mal!

If you're looking for courseware that will teach you a sizable amount of French vocabulary or grammar, then this product isn't for you. The four CDs are limited in their content from that respect. But, if you're interested in understanding why the French you hear spoken in France, doesn't sound like the formal French that you learned in a classroom, then this product is for you. I haven't found any other that does a better job. If you're diligent about doing the exercises, you'll be better equipped to both comprehend and speak "street" French. What I find unacceptable is that for this product's high price tag for such a limited amount of content, I would expect it to be flawless. There are blatant inconsistencies between the French conversations on the CDs and the documented conversations in the handbook. There are also inconsistencies in the handbook between the French conversations and the English translations. There is not that much content, it could have easily been reviewed and corrected during the courseware development process! The other aspect that I find unacceptable is that the last page of the handbook gives credit to a number of people, but not to an audio technician. There are three voices that you hear in each section. There is a conversation in French between an interviewee and an interviewer, and a course instructor that analyzes the conversation. In most sections the interviewee's voice is only 2/3 the volume of the instructor. The interviewer's voice is only 1/3 of the volume. If an audio technician was used, perhaps all three voices would be equally discernable.

Okay I'm going to just dish out the straight facts about this product without the fluff or the lies: 1. The cds come with a booklet. Download the cd to your ipod if you want to take it everywhere you go. 2. This doesn't teach vocab, doesn't help you magically have conversations on the streets of Paris. This is not Pimsleur/Micheal Thomas etc. 3. When the guy starts doing numbers, be prepared to just stop repeating because as soon as he gets to thirty or forty, he speeds up and you're left biting the dust. I'm not kidding. I skip it. 4. This course is EXTREMELY GOOD for pronouncing and differentiating certain sounds, such as the "u" in "tu" and "ou" in "fou". This has helped me tremendously and my tutor has definitely noticed a difference. 5. Not only is this course good for pronunciation, but for understanding speech. For example, why some words aren't said in daily speech or are clipped short...something you do NOT learn in a classroom setting. It helps with liaisons as well. It makes you see and understand why french in the real world sounds a hell of a lot different/confusing/faster than french in the classroom. 6. There are different conversations to follow and listen to, different voices, so you're not listening to one person and getting accustomed to their voice. 7. There's repetition that'll annoy you but repetition helps loads. He does a good job at pronunciating everything slowly and exaggerated so you can wrap your mouth around it. 8. Repetition is key, no matter how boring the topics on this cd are. Overall, I rate this a four because I found that "The Sounds" section is extremely beneficial. It's the phonetics portion of this course and that's what a lot of intermediate and advanced students like to work on to sound more french. If you want vocab, try Vocabulearn or read a book in french (easy reader, Harry Potter), watch movies and check out TV5. If you want to converse or work on it, hire a tutor or find one on Skype.

What I LOVE about this SmartFrench CD are the interviews with 19 different people (chef, fashion model, musician--you get the idea). You can listen to each person talking about their career (very interesting!). There is a very high quality booklet included with the CD. The booklet contains the text of what each French person is saying about their career. The French words are color coded so that whatever is not pronounced (silent) is printed in another color. That is SO helpful to me! Now I am able to read a little, too. The English text is also included. French text on left page, English on right--so you can compare. It's one thing to learn French in a classroom, but it is different thing entirely to hear it spoken by native French speakers. This CD helps to tune your ear so that it makes sense. I use the booklet a lot. It goes over how to pronounce the alphabet, numbers and silent letters. It has charts of `sounds'. I have a lot of materials at home to help me learn French, and most methods forget to teach/review the basics. Also included are "Useful dialogues when you visit France" for use in the subway, on the street, in the taxi, café, at the concierge's desk, restaurant, a friends wedding, post office, museum, hotel and airport. I really love using this SmartFrench CD. I was a beginning French speaker before our trip to France 3 months ago. Being in France helped attune my ear to the language, but I could only pick up a few words. This CD is helping me to comprehend a LOT more French when I hear my French friends talking, and I am beginning to speak so that I am understood!

What a horrible waste of money. If you want to learn French (even basic conversational French), do NOT buy this product. The only good feature is learning the numbers. The sounds and dialogues are absolutely worthless. There are no verb conjugation exercises or vocabulary drills. I do not understand how this product has an overall rating of 4. If there was a negative rating, I would use it.

I took French in an US high school many, many years ago but this is the first time I have had any confidence with pronunciation. I am, as advertised, actually beginning to understand some spoken French and enjoying! My goals are modest. I plan to visit Paris in the fall and just want to make a reasonable effort to communicate in tourist situations. The CD experience has been most useful for me. At first, I concentrated on one disc repeated a number of times but now I try to move through a new disk in a week and review the previous disks in a week. I will now take more advantage of the website for additional support. I appreciate this opportunity and have a real sense of accomplishment. I look forward to progressing and ultimately visiting France.

Ive been using the whole range of SmartFrench products for some months now and am sure it is the best language course i have ever tried in book,cd or cd rom form. I would recommend starting with the introduction cd's before tackling the beginner version.The introduction cd's need repeated listening ,usually this is where it all falls apart (i found repeated listening to Michael Thomas cd's extremely difficult due to his strange accent ,pompous manner and wierd exchanges between his two students )i have listened to the smartfrench cd's some 11 or 12 times and still find them quite fresh and Christian Aubert's accent easy to listen to . Having worked on verbs,numbers and vocabulary from the introduction cd's i find i can express most of the things i want to say without a struggle.I have also used the Penguin Parallel French texts to suppliment my listening and ahve found these useful but not terribly relevent are much of the vocabulary is quite obscure , maybe Christian Aubert should write a Smart French parallel text book ,i would certainly buy that. I am now working on the beginner conversations which are similarly fascinating (peopled by a wig maker ,a chef,a model and various other real french people ,boring it is'nt ) the emphasis being on listening and speaking rather than reading. The cd rom is extremely easy to navigate around and as for reading smartfrench for travellers will be going with me when i go to Paris and the Dordogne this year as it is packed withvery useful phrases. On the stregnth of Smartfrench i purchased SmartsSpanish and was delighted to find it followed the same format using a native Sanish speaker and real Spanish people ,the attention to detail is the same and i am looking forward to exploring the product in greater detail in the near future. I find the main difference with the Smart Language series is that i practise every day and don't resent it one bit ,and yes ive found it relly sticks and tenses seem easy . So all in all a really great product which will teach you how to speak French the way real French people speak with the correct liasons and vocabulary as it has been compiled using recorded conversations .Unique and practcal ,well done SmartFrench. David Bentley .

still learning

I bought this product a few months ago and even though I'm not practising anywhere near as much as I should be, I've noticed that I can now watch a French language film and can pick out odd words here and there... it's great when you realise that all the spoken language no longer sounds frighteningly fast and incomprehensible! I've been listening to the CDs in the car and without even realising that I was 'learning' I find that I know quite a few words and key phrases. The CDs contain lots of useful tips and information that help to keep you really interested. I've still got a long way to go and am now thinking about buying the next instalment of Smart French so hopefully I'll be going from strength to strength. This is a really good product that not only teaches you the language, it also gives you lots of encouragement and the confidence to use it.

This product will probably be just another addition to the other french materials that you have on your shelf. Lets get real; theres no magic product out there thats going to have you speaking french like a native in no time at all. No matter what the hype or any their reviews may have you believing. Granted smartfrench will help you train your ears (to some degree) to the way french people speak. So it may have a place in your collection of french materials and just that. If you relied on this product as the only your only source to learn french. You'd be asking far, far too much from it. There isnt enough substance, enough grounding to get you remotely going (even with the introduction cd's). I've tried most french materials but always find myself going back to Michel Thomas as my main source. I found the beginners level ok but struggled a little with the advanced level until the 'penny - dropped'. Its at that point that you start structuring sentances in your own mind. And thats where you want to be. Theres always going to be other sources that you will draw upon at the same time. Smartfrench may be one of them peripheal sources - why not! All I'm suggesting is dont make it your main source.

Smart French: Having forgotten most of the french I learn't 50 years ago, what a refreshing (in any sense of the word) experience Smart French is. So natural, and listening to french spoken in ordinary conversations by French folk, couldn't be bettered. I am looking forward to making real some progress using these CD's. I have transferred them to my MP3 and listen while at the gym. Play the cd's in the car. And also am sharing this experience with a 4 year old, who's accent is spot on. Elizabeth.