Take Off in French

by Marie-Therese Bougard (Editor)

For anyone who has ever wanted to learn a language but has been intimidated by the process, Oxford presents this new enjoyable and efficient language learning series. Based on the idea that the easiest and most effective way to learn a foreign language is by developing the key skills of listening and comprehension, each volume in Oxford's new Take off in... series features five hours of audio content, fully reinforced by a clearly laid-out, grammatically structured course book, giving learners a unique and innovative approach to language learning.Each Take off in... unit is designed specifically to meet the needs of anyone learning a language on their own. The series gives learners the confidence to communicate from the very first lesson by offering more practice in listening to and speaking the language than any comparable course. Here are some of the outstanding features of this series:
-- Listening and speaking skills, the building blocks of language learning, are emphasized in 5 hours of audio content
-- No prior knowledge of the language is required -- this course is designed to be used by an absolute beginner or by anyone who needs to brush up on lost language skills
-- The course is made up of carefully structured learning blocks within each unit to break up the learning process into manageable sections
-- A continuous story runs throughout the course, showcasing everyday life in the culture, and making language learning more fun
-- Cultural information is included in every lesson
-- Regular self-assessment sections show learners instantly how far they've progressed
-- The course is backed up by a solid grammatical toolkit, which builds step-by-step on the knowledge learners gain as they move through the course
-- Business vocabulary and customs are covered as well as general and social vocabulary and situations
-- An advanced-level cassette offers extra practice in speaking and pronunciation

Genres: Language, France

Audio CD

First published July 1, 2000

Reviews

[Melz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Working with this book and its audios will improve your listening skills

[Liam Porter · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wouldn't recommend this course except as revision material. It is designed for an absolute beginner, yet does not provide full translations of the French texts. I think this is a terrible trend in language instruction publishing that effectively renders a lot of the thoughtful work that goes into such books as these quite useless, since without full translations the beginner is going to struggle so unduly that his motivation will be threatened.

For an intermediate learner such as myself, the material is good additional practice, but at the same time the book is not very challenging - the first chapters can be skipped - and provides only limited vocabulary growth.

I consider audio material vital to a beginner's study regime, and this book is very scanty in this regard. I have gone through several similar books, and whereas most audio content generates a dozen or so pages of notes, made from "blind" listening, this book's generated only 4. This reflects the low difficult level of the book, which is not a fault, but also the lack of meat here.

Without splicing up the audio material to check, I'll just have to guess that within 4 hours of CD playtime there is perhaps half an hour of French dialogue. It sounds incredible, but most of that playtime is taken up with recapitulations of those same dialogues, broken up into chunks and formulated into drills. The focus in on getting you to speak, rather than expanding your comprehension, so bear my criticism of the listening and vocabulary in this light.

So here I should say that if you love being drilled by a CD, by all means find this book. If you were to use this method, you would improve your speaking skills. However I personally could never make this method the centre of my learning. I also doubt that any fluency in speaking will be of much use when the lack of breadth in the material provided will render any real French conversation mere babble to you.

As obvious as it is to say, no one book - even of the mighty Assimil series - will ever give you more than a stepping-stone's improvement in the language. I don't want to offer the useless criticism that this book does not contain everything needed to learn French. However I think it's necessary to state the obvious, since so much exaggeration abounds in the publishing industry. This particular book would be more honestly titled "French Drills for beginners: find confidence in speaking spontaneously (includes grammar explanations and pronunciation tips)."

[Minkyong · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's not like a reading a language learning book, it was more like reading a novel.
A very organized and useful pack.

I love Oxford's Take off in series!