Berlitz Self-Teacher: French,   ISBN:9780399513237

Customer Rating: 

A great tool for non-French-speaking beginners.

Memorize phrases in just minutes!

Not for the intermediate or advanced speakers, but a really great way to teach yourself the basics of French.

Customer Rating: 

Just the steak....without the sizzle!!!! I agree with a previous reviewer that there is a reason why a 60 year old text has held up so well over the years. The instruction is intuitive and builds logically. The pronunciation is transilliterated to facilitate pronunciation. Each leçon is approximately 3 pages long. A certain activity is described in about 50 sentences. Each sentence is in French, transilliterated French, and English. Subsequent sentences build upon the prior ones. At the end of each leçon is a self test of about 15 questions, with answers. Each leçon might take 10-15 minutes, depending on your skills. Effective study sessions can be multiples of that duration of time. Each chapter also has a "Note to Student", where important explanations are given. Concise...convenient....easy...and fun!!!!
This text is also a wonderful adjunct to any other French course(s) you might be using. I believe that there is a tendency to use the latest, most expensive, most hyped language course methods out there. While we all learn differently, a daily, conscientious approach is required, regardless of the course (or cost). My experience with Amazon has been that the most highly rated products do not disappoint. Many of the popular language courses today harp on immersion, as opposed to vocabulary and conjugations. They claim that your first language was learned that way. While I do not disagree, and concur that throwing you in the deep end will force you to learn to swim, the adult brain does learn differently than the child's. Sometimes we need to know WHY it was said like that. Buy, use and enjoy this gem!! You will not be disappointed. Bonne chance!!!!

Customer Rating: 

I'm not a native speaker, so I don't claim to be an expert, but this is my main criticism of the book: Apparently it hasn't been revised since it was first published in 1949. The old-fashioned pictures are quaint, but some of the sentence constructions are not. For example, some of the first questions are of this pattern: "Est-ce le mouchoir?" This is grammatically correct, but people don't actually talk like that (and, I don't know: do people still carry hankies?); it would be more natural to say, "C'est un mouchoir?" There is no index, so if there's something you want to review, you'll have to search for it. There aren't any in-depth explanations about grammar, just occasional short notes from the "professor." The book's purpose is to give you the sense of the whole language through repetition and recycling of lessons--so in that sense it may work well for some people. Users may like the English translations and transliterations; I find them rather distracting. As an instructor of beginning French,I'm still looking for a clear, engaging, inexpensive introduction to the language.

Customer Rating: 

I am trying to learn french in order to pass a CLEP test. I had 2 years of french in high school, but have forgotten most of it. I have tried to compile a comprehensive study regime in order to read, speak and hear the french language. Currently I have Learn in Your Car French, French in Action videos on the Internet, and this book. The Berlitz French book is an enjoyable route to learn how to read French and even word pronounciation. Each word has in this book book has a pronounciation guide underneath it. This feature is really great. As you are learning new vocabulary, you learn how to say it correctly.

Customer Rating: 

This is great stuff! I developed better-than-decent proficiency at both French and German, starting from ground zero, working with these books for only a week or so. I would prefer a few more rules frankly stated as such: I found that I had to infer rules from what at first seemed like irregularities or surprises in a sample text. I don't know how the author(s) managed, but the odd assortment of dialogues is evidently sufficiently ingeniously chosen that one builds a strong practical vocabulary--certainly to make oneself clearly understood and to have educated foreigners truthfully tell you that they're most impressed with the extent of your command of language X. Warning: German will prove somewhat more difficult than French, as the conjugations are more detailed, the genders are more numerous (three versus two), and the declensions of adjectives and nouns will definitely present an onerous burden that one never fully gets used to. (BTW, the older printings were preferable--I'd rather have an honest green overcoat with the German or French text than have a black-and-white overcoat with an arrow pointing to it that says in English, "Um, er, pretend that this thing here is colored green.")