French Foundation Course

by Michel Thomas

Provides an eight-hour course in French as well as a 2-hour review course. This CD pack points out the similarities of the vocabulary in English and French and gives you the tools to guess the words you do not know, or think you do not know. It covers the present, future, conditional and past tenses.

Genres: Nonfiction, France, Audiobook

240 pages, Audio CD

First published September 29, 2006

About the author

Michel Thomas (born Moniek (Moshe) Kroskof, February 3, 1914 – January 8, 2005) was a polyglot linguist, language teacher, and decorated war veteran. He survived imprisonment in several different Nazi concentration camps after serving in the Maquis (World War II) of the French Resistance and worked with the U.S. Army Counter Intelligence Corps during World War II. After the war, Thomas emigrated to the United States, where he developed a language-teaching system known as the Michel Thomas Method. In 2004 he was awarded the Silver Star by the U.S. Army.

Reviews

[Nicola · Rating 5 out of 5]

Michel Thomas is simply the best language course out there. If his style suits you like it does me then no other form of language learning will be more enjoyable and teach you more, faster, than this does.

Now that I've done this to death it's time to move on to his more advanced courses.

[ShepherdsDelight · Rating 5 out of 5]

87/100 (= 5.1/6) ≈ 5 Stars

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Excellent introductory course for English speakers. A huge confidence booster, since it shows clearly the similarity of French and English, and consequently with just a few simple pronunciation changes, how many French words we actually already now.
It goes for the "low hanging fruit" in a certain sense. If you learn a couple of rules, you can jump quickly to a vast set of applications. The result, as some reviewers point out, is that you have the feeling that you know more of the language than you actually do.
But it's true, with this small set of building blocks, you can communicate a whole heap of things. I think it's one of the best places to start (I can only compare to Rocket, Pimsleur, Duolingo, Memrise, Lingvist...).

[LadySofia · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've been trying to get a grip on the French language for a while now, and finally I got the feeling that I have. Michel Thomas is a good speaker, he lets you think it out for yourself, and helps along only when needed. And there was no big memorizing of vocabulary part, which was quite relieving. The words I did learn, I didn't force into my head, but they were used so often, that they wanted to stay on their own.
This was engaging, and I think I learned lots. Thank you.

[Sheila · Rating 5 out of 5]

Other language courses all approach learning a language in the same by taking you through scenarios such as shopping, buying a train ticket etc. I've never found one which gets you speaking real onversations you'd want to have with people except this one. I wish I had found it sooner. Which other introductory course gets you to the point of saying "I woudl like to know what you think about the political and economic situation in France?" I feel so much more confident in saying things in French than I did a week ago. He uses a building block approach, totally aural learning. You build up from learning say "Voulez vous" to saying Voulez vous diner avec moi ce soir? This approach - Highly recommended.

[Frightful_elk · Rating 5 out of 5]

My strongest feeling after working through this course is disappointment. I have been taught French for much of my young life, why has no one taught me like this before!!??

The Michel Thomas method presents the most basic building blocks of the language in a way that lets you communicate in a simple and flexible way. Instead of teaching complex (or basic) phraseology by rote, where you learn what the sentence means but not its meaning, Michel Thomas gives you some basic building blocks which you can rearrange to suit what you need to say and hopefully build on.

Much recommended, 8 hours has taught me more than 8 years school french. Also comes in German, Spanish and Italian.

[Cintia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Its a pity that I had to learn to speak the french language in a harder way. The techniques he uses to teach not only french, but many other languages are both practical and effective.
Not only that, but its informality, its simplicity puts the learner at ease, and before you know it, youre ready to hold up a conversation!
I reckon that the advanced secondary education (sixth form or equivalent) would captivate their students attention and interest to wanting study a language further simply through perhaps attempting to introduce this way of learning and practicing any language in their curriculum.

[Amr Fahmy · Rating 5 out of 5]

English Below
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دورة أكثر من رائعة.. لم أدرس الفرنسية من قبل ابدا ومع ذلك أفادني ميشيل توماس كثيرا حتى حين قمت بزيارة إلى باريس

This is truly impressive. I have never studied French before trying this course and I found the language not that hard I imagined before. It even helped me when I spent a week in Paris.

[Anca · Rating 3 out of 5]

Useful, if a bit annoying. It really is fantastic for a fast introduction or for triggering previous knowledge from your school years. It's a little too focused on cognates and the accent is horrible but it will get you speaking french in a weekend. A word of caution: this is not a course that you should practice or drill. Just do it once and then move on to something else.

[Torki · Rating 4 out of 5]

With out home work or text book or even with out memorization with this master, yes you can do it .simply by understanding and absorbing the language the way we learn our mother tongue language. Brilliant....