SmartFrench - Introduction to French, Vol.1 (English and French Edition)

Christian Aubert

ISBN 10: 1934519014 ISBN 13: 9781934519011

Publisher: SmartLanguages,inc, 2007

If you are new to learning French, please visit our new online program at frenchwhisperer.com. it will give you a very strong base before you work on vocabulary, grammar and conjugation with our cds
"Our son is using the product (as complement for GCSE prep.) and making leaps of progress already after years of frustration and struggling. Probably the best seller we have ever dealt with. Recommend unreservedly. 20 February 2010" D. CRASS 'J Linn' Gt Britain
This is volume 1 of 2 volumes introducing basic French vocabulary, grammar and conjugation to the very beginner who wants to learn French, in order to prepare him or her to the practice of real life conversations in our 'SmartFrench Audio CDs Beginner' product, or our 'SmartFrench CDROM - Learn French Like Real French People'. It's not just sentences that you can learn from 'SmartFrench for Travelers'.

You might want to study both programs (Volumes and Dialogs) simultaneously, on one side, the two volumes to acquire the basics, and on the other side the 'SmartFrench Audio CDs Beginner' or the CDROM to tune your ear and learn to listen to the French language the way it is really spoken.

This volume 1 contains the alphabet, the numbers and the conjugation of the four verbs the most used in French and in English, with multiple examples. You will learn useful tips to memorize them easily. The volume 2 contains all the basic French vocabulary and basic grammar. It is necessary to go through 'Vol.1' before working on the second volume.

The basic vocabulary contained in the second volume represents the words you will find in any real conversations. We have recorded French people conversing naturally for our 'SmartFrench Audio CDs Beginner' program (and for our CDROM) and we have analyzed these dialogs. We observed that 65% of all words spoken in any of these conversations were always the same and basic. After listening and practicing with these 2 volumes of 'SmartFrench - Introduction to French', you will know 65% of all conversations you will ever have in French or you will happen to listen to.

If your intention is to learn a few sentences to get by when you are in France, this tool is not for you. You should get our 'SmartFrench for Travelers' book and/or download it with the audios on the smartfrench website.

Like for all our products, we use our color-coding method to help you with your pronunciation. The way you will speak with SmartFrench is the natural way. You will sound like a French person very early learning French with SmartFrench and you will feel very confident speaking French.

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About the Author:

Since I started to teach a French course in Beverly Hills in summer 2000 it has been an obsession for me to find a way to share my ability to speak French with others. I first released a series of CDs and DVDs in four languages. I had amazing reviews but also some bad reviews. People would not automatically understand my concept for learning french. I had to explain. Therefore I always knew that one element was missing in my method. Then the 2008 recession happened and it forced me to close my company. That created a new opportunity for me to reflect on the whole thing. And I found the last element that was missing. My method is now complete. I can now welcome you to my french language series. That new element is for all levels and everyone should master this first : you can access it by going to frenchwhisperer.com. It will give you the same benefits you would get if you would stay three years in France. It's the only French course that will help you learn french in context.

Review:

We recently received an email questioning our 5 star reviews. We felt compelled to respond to our customer. This is our response: Dear X, To try to be seen by customers me and my team have to work extremely hard. We don't have the budget to appear on top of pages like others do. I am not a teacher at university either who could have his students write comments. It has another advantage though. We are necessarily closer to our customers and we like to help them as much as we can. What happens with the reviews is the result of a close contact with them. When customers write a favourable comment for delivery adding that the product is good, we ask them for a review. We offer free advice. They can call us to chat in French. We replace lost booklets for free. We give lists of vocabulary for free to all our buyers if they need. Naturally if they like our products, we ask them for a review and we ask them to paste it on all our products (as they are related). I am happy when our customers write good reviews and even so if it's written with spirit. If they copy from other reviewers, it's their choice. We love our customers and they love us. Everything can happen. We have once received an unfavourable review, which, we could prove, had been written by a competitor... and he pasted it to several of our products, just like another opinion below! At Smart Language we would never think of writing a bad review, for any reason except if we'd returned a product and would be denied a refund. By the way, we have always refunded when asked and if you want to return yours, it's absolutely fine. Our method is unconventional and certain people will not like it and it's their right. We have been very fortunate over the years to communicate by email or on the phone with so many wonderful people. We received the generous free help of writers, lawyers, journalists, and professors, who had bought our products and wanted to help us (for the description, corrections or else)... --Response to customer

... Our technique was born from the difficulties we experienced ourselves in communicating in English. It was absolutely necessary for us to help people avoid the same difficulties. That method really came from the heart and I am convinced that there is no better product on the market that develops the faculty of listening to the french language and speak it like ours does. When a mother emailed us and told us that she wanted to make sure the product was suited for her son as the money was limited, I honestly told her that it was not designed for young people. She decided to try it anyway and afterwards, she emailed me again and told me: '... our son is using the product and making leaps of progress already after years of frustration and struggling'. Of course, once again I asked her to paste her comment everywhere possible. I am very and personally sorry if that offends some. With the budget we have, I don't know what else to do for our products to be discovered. The words of mouth have been good so far. On the descriptions we always mention to either start with the SmartFrench volumes of introduction or work with them simultaneously. With all the reviews, emails and calls, I have realized that the cdrom is most appreciated by people who have already struggled with French or who have been disappointed when travelling to France. When I was recording the lessons, our French sound engineer told me the method was right because he never took any English class. I asked him how long it took him to feel comfortable speaking English, he told me one year. For me, after 5 years of English classes, I could not have a regular comfortable conversation in English when I arrived in the US. It took me three years to feel comfortable. It seems that fixing the problem was harder than listening first to something you can't understand and mimicking when someone speaks. Repeating dialogs seemed more efficient. The dilemma we had was to call the level of the cdrom 'beginner level'. How to explain that learning grammar is one thing and listening is another, that you can be intermediate or advanced in French and still a beginner at listening? We chose to take a risk to disappoint a few but to give the opportunity to all. At least, they would see with the lists of vocabulary that 65% of any conversation, casual or not, regardless of the person or the theme, are just basic words. We developed SmartFrench not as a quick fix but for the serious learner. If you are lost after two lessons, it's normal to me. I was lost after 5 years. But if you stick with SmartFrench, you will have a chance to have a lasting result. If people want to learn only a few casual sentences, the SmartFrench for travellers product is the one to get. I would suggest that you get more than one method, like you had more than one teacher for any subject you have learned in your life so far. All methods will teach you something and are good in that sense. We are always welcoming our competition and I am not concerned if they are better or not as good. They are very different. Some will fit you more than others. SmartFrench was conceived to be a long time companion to refer to along the road, a method to learn French from and also one to use and check periodically the progress made. Cordially, Christian Aubert Smart Language and frenchwhisperer.com --Response to customer - suite

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