What other people say about French Level 1 Win/Mac Personal Edition [Old Version]

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French Level 1 Win/Mac Personal Edition [Old Version] From:Fairfield Language Technologies
See Product Page	User Rating:Amazon Sales Rank:#2848

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4 of 4 customers found the following review helpful: Content Disappointing, 2007-08-08 The teaching method seems fine but I'll have to buy Level 2 to be able to order a sandwich in a bistro! Can't believe they thought zoo animal names should be tought before food names. Major bumout or buy both levels at once and go through 100 lessons before you can order breakfast! I asked Rosetta Stone about this problem with Level 1 French and they answered by referring me to their English teaching software to find food names. Not a help. 4 of 5 customers found the following review helpful: You may be able to get this for free., 2007-08-05 Before you pay a bundle for this product, check your local library. My library cooperative, in Hillsborough County, Florida, owns a licence for the whole shebang, every language and every level. Maybe yours does too: it won't hurt to check. I found it quite by accident in my library's online catalog. I registered by entering my library card number, loading a plugin that was provided, and creating a password. Now I can access it at home online and use any set of lessons I want, for the cost of a library card, which I had anyway. Actually I spent quite a lot of time on the French module, but when I got to Paris I had very little occasion to remark that the children were about to jump off the table. (I plan to cross post this to other language modules.) 4 of 4 customers found the following review helpful: The best computerized method for learning language, 2007-05-09 Rosetta Stone's implementation of total immersion works the best, in my opinion. Other products use total immersion as well, but many are a conglomeration of tools whereas Rosetta Stone is an organized, progressive system that helps one learn, and retain. The best method, of course, is consistent, real interaction with the language, but if a PC is all you have, Rosetta works well. 24 of 25 customers found the following review helpful: An excellent supplement, 2007-04-30 After using the R(osetta) S(tone) French course for the better part of 3 months, I'm beginning to form an opinion. My main conclusion is this: You won't learn a lot of French by using this program alone. You need solid backups such as a French grammar and dictionary, and running through another, more traditional course in parallel with RS wouldn't hurt either. Fortunately, I didn't become aware of RS until I had at least some of the basic French grammar partially internalised through about a year of leisure-time study together with friends. Having gone part of the way, getting RS came as a breath of fresh air. I could practise what I had learned, and listen to, read, write and speak French, and get immediate feedback on how I did. I'm also learning lots of new words, and picking up sentence constructs all the time. Before purchasing RS however, you should know exactly what you're going to get. RS offers no explanations whatsoever on the principles behind the language. To someone completely new to French, it is not necessarily evident why adjective endings vary depending on - well, on what? If your native tongue is English, and French is your first experience with learing a second language, the idea of grammatical gender will be completely new to you, as will the idea of conjugating adjectives according to gender and number. RS offers no explanation of these or any other language concepts. This is not an unintended shortcoming of the course. On the the contrary, this is all by design and intention. The very idea behind the course is that one should learn, not by rote-learning grammatical rules and looking up words, but by looking, reading and listening the way children learn their first language. To be honest, I'm not sure it works that way. I find myself looking up words in the dictionary when I'm unsure of what they mean, and consulting my grammar when wondering about some conjugation or construct. For me, the two main strong points about RS are: 1) It is a quick and easy way to expand upon an existing, rudimentary understanding of the language, and 2) It is strong on speaking and listening, not just on reading and writing. So much for the ideas and principles of the program. A couple of more practical gripes to round it all off: The copy protection is a nuisance, and feels almost like an insult. You are required to keep the CD in the computer at all times while using the application, and it is virtually impossible to copy the CD. I believe that I should be allowed to protect my investment by making a backup copy for daily use, and keep the original in a safe place. The keyboard driver is LOUSY. Apparently, Fairfield Language Technologies believes that their users will have a computer with a keyboard setup matched to the language they are trying to learn. This assumption is, of course, in direct opposition to what will usually be the case. Being a Norwegian, I will have a Norwegian, not a French keyboard setup. While there is an on-screen keyboard which can be operated by the mouse, this causes frustrations no end, with mismatched keys, and even one letter that cannot be accessed from the keyboard at all, so I'm forced to use the mouse (the on-screen keyboard has correct keys). No, it does not help to install and use the French keyboard layout in Windows 2000. The keys match up differently from the Norwegian layout, but they still do not match correctly, and several keys are still stone dead. A MAJOR flaw in a pricey and supposedly professional product like this. I was not sure about whether to assign 2 or 3 stars, but I fell down on 3. In my book, to achieve 5 stars, RS would have to do something about the 2 practical point mentioned above, as well as change their presentation of the program to something more along the lines of "Excellent language learning supplement" than "Stand-alone language course". As a supplement it shines. As a standalone course it bombs. Excellent!, 2007-03-08 Great product...Arrived on time as expected and was what was advertised...Completely new, still in plastic, enjoyable course, highly recommend the seller!
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