Saturday, March 14, 2009

Look Inside To Discover How To Speak French

By James Redder

One of the most rewarding challenges that you can ever undertake is when you learn to speak a second language. When attempting to learn the native tongue of the countries in which you travel adds a whole new dimension to an already thrilling experience.

People can find many courses claiming to teach a foreign language. How do you know which courses are excellent and which ones fall short of their intended goal? This site was put up so that our experience can be shared with anyone who wants to learn how to speak French.

I have chosen to review Rocket French which has been produced by a company called Rocket Language Ltd. Marie-Claire Rivire wrote the course who is a native to France. This company prides itself for producing high quality language learning courses which include Spanish, Italian, Chinese, Japanese, German, French and the American Sign Language.

The first module is made up of 31 audio tracks. You will be able to speak some basic words immediately following your very first lesson. This course instructs you in conversational French. This means that you will be able to converse with native French speakers as you travel throughout the country. You will feel that you are in your own comfort zone as you speak with the locals, ordering in restaurants and asking for directions, etc.

The package includes the actual transcripts of the audios and I found that particularly helpful in following along. Each audio is about 20 minutes long which means the full module is about 11 hours of content. The methods used within this content will allow you to absorb and speak modern French quickly. Eleven hours seems like a lot I know, but with the use of the audio tracks the time goes by very quickly and effortlessly.

The program also includes software that makes learning very easy, and more importantly, it is fun. The first software application is what they call MegaVocab.

This is a vocabulary recognition tool. I found this very helpful in the beginning especially. You basically run through a series of words and you learn the words through repetition, and an association with a picture. It's sort of like the flashcards you used to learn with when you were a kid.

The software has a total of 1,000 words and pictures built into it. However, the course allows you to add more pictures and words of your own choice as you advance with the French language.

Once I started to learn the vocabulary I went on to the MegaAudio software. This phase of the course is where I started to feel confident about all I had learned.

The software provides exercises that test and improve your recognition of the spoken words. The system provides a score with each exercise so you always have a unit of measure for your progress.

I found this software to be a lot of fun to use. It is one thing to learn the vocabulary, but to understand it when spoken is another. In my opinion this is where other programs fall short, and where Rocket French excels.

Another very cool aspect of the Rocket French program was that it isn't just an introductory course. The course is designed with the assumption that the student has no background in the language when starting. But it continues to an advanced level as well. I felt like this increased the value of the program because I wouldn't have to go out and buy a more advanced course as I progressed.

Possibly the most impressive part of this course is the members only forum where you can ask questions and communicate with other students and the Rocket Language online instructors. To me, this forum made the cost of this course a real bargain. If you happen to get stuck on something, you find lots of help in the forum.

I would like to close with a comment about the price of this course. Since I wanted to get started right away, I was so glad to find that there was a downloadable option available. That means I did not have to wait for CDs, printed material and software to be shipped out. If you choose the downloadable option, you will receive a discount of $200. I was then able to listen to the software on my computer, burn the material to a CD and even load audio onto my ipod. By choosing the downloadable course, I saved myself $200 and was able to pick up the course for just under $100.

To top it all off, the folks at Rocket offer the course with a 60 day guarantee with no questions asked. When I consider the quality of the material presented, the software, the forum participation, the guarantee, and the bargain price, I can only give the Rocket French program my highest rating of 5 stars. If you are wanting to learn a second language, I think you will have a real hard time beating the quality of this program.

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