Customer Reviews: Read 6 more reviews...
 One of the best February 1, 2008
JP Jenkins (UK)
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
I agree with the majority of the reviewers below. the common complaint is that this is not advanced? Well that is arguably the case but if you have a basic understanding of French and you want to take youreself into the A level (which incidentally stands for advanced) then I recommend this set. The fact that I took A level French many years ago and this set clarifies tenses better than any teacher I have experienced says it all- and now I am relatively comfortable with 19 YES 19 tenses after this course (even the subjunctive!!).
I would also add that his advice at the end of the cd is priceless I just wish he managed to produce a further course.And he has got rid of the dithering student from the introductory course which was frustrating. The man was a genius.
Oh and for the lady who called this complete rubbish it depends what you wanted out of the course, maybe checking some reviews would have been helpful first before spending money on it.
All Michel Thomas Products are brilliant December 30, 2007
Johnnies (United Kingdom)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Paid for this 2 years ago...still learning from it today. I just let it go round on DJ on the MP3 player...absorb a lesson (again!) and it all just sinks in as we go. Michel is quite brilliant as a teacher. I learned more from him than I did in years of application at school. In fact loads of what they taught us at school was just plain bad grammar!
Great course and a great teaching method November 6, 2007
Dean J. Marshall (Hants, UK)
7 out of 7 found this review helpful
I did a little French at school (twenty-five years ago!) and the Michel Thomas foundation course and I am now on disc 7 of the Advanced course. Michel Thomas has a great teaching method. He immediately takes the onus off you to lean and puts it on himself to teach. The CDs are a set of informal teaching sessions between Michel and two students and this format makes them easy listening. Just listen to these CDs a few times and you will take it in. Also because it is audio based you can learn when in the car or even in the bath. The other advantage is that you will be surprised how much theory you pick up allowing you to adapt the specifics that he teaches. I hate learning from books so this was a great way to improve my French. These CDs have improved my confidence and given me a base to learn from more traditional methods. The only limitation is that Michel Thomas concentrates on spoken French and consequently my written French is much weaker. Highly recommended to anyone who wants to learn or improve their French language.
NOT complete rubbish: this is a great supplement to the foundation course, but not for very advanced speakers of French! October 2, 2007
Tim Higgins (Banbridge, Northern Ireland)
7 out of 7 found this review helpful
This course is to take you on from the foundation course, IF you found it good, though not everybody does (see my review of that). Once you've mastered the foundation course, this is excellent as the next stage. If you are already advanced at French, say, A-level and still retaining, then the term 'Advanced' may be a misnomer to you.
Thomas builds on the techniques he employed, and continues to simplify new tense endings into how they sound, categorises verbs in an easy way, and paints graphic pictures on how to form the more complex tenses. I agree some of the constructions he draws from you are difficult, but this is to build confidence: if you can master complex conditionals, you'll feel more astute at the simpler constructions. This has one star more from me than the foundation course since the problem of long gaps has been remedied.
Though I am not at the end of this yet, I can offer this review as I am confident it will not disappoint in the end. It IS for speaking French, but there is a chapter at the end on reading French.
Drawbacks are due to his desire to avoid memorising, some things need reinforcing; for example, there are 16 verbs of motion and living that take etre instead of avoir for the compose tense, yet I could not see this in the menu, and had to find a book with it. The whole course is done at learning speed of course, so to hone your listening skills, you should record Open University French programs and listen to the conversations. No French person will speak at the speed on these CDs, believe me.
To its praise, I went to France to look for work, and all that I learnt stood me well. There was even an English-speaking woman who had lived there for a year trying to master French who, hearing these CDs in my caravan, ordered them for herself. She said he easily explained things about the language she had never really grasped.
Stretching March 7, 2007
Mr. Ross Maynard (Glasgow, Scotland)
32 out of 32 found this review helpful
I worked in France twenty years ago and have just decided to try and reactivate the French that I learned by purchasing this advanced course. I have not used the Foundation course but I slipped into this course easily. Michel Thomas has a very easy manner, and the presence of the students helps make it real. They make mistakes too, and their accents are no better than mine which makes me feel better. Thomas concentrates on the construction of sentences. In this advanced set the focus is on past, future and conditional tenses with many complicated constructions and variations. Some of these are so extreme I really couldn't imagine using them ('If you had told me about it I would have bought it' etc). However, he breaks it down well and it is very motivating to "get" the idea. The course concentrates on verbs and their usage. There are very few nouns here - you'll need to buy a dictionary for those. But you will master the use of the language in all the common tenses. Recommended.
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