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Ultimate French Beginner-Intermediate (CD/Book) (LL(R) Ultimate Basic-Intermed) | 
 enlarge | Author: Living Language
Publisher: Living Language
Category: Book
List Price: $79.95
Buy New: $46.65
You Save: $33.30 (42%)
New (27) Used (11) from $45.00
Avg. Customer Rating:  18 reviews
Sales Rank: 40957
Format: Unabridged
Media: Paperback
Edition: Bilingual
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 448
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2.6
Dimensions (in): 10.1 x 9.3 x 2.3
ISBN: 1400021057
Dewey Decimal Number: 440
EAN: 9781400021055
ASIN: 1400021057
Publication Date: September 21, 2004
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Brand new item. Over 4 million customers served. Order now. Selling online since 1995. Few left in stock - order soon. Code: R20081114232523H
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Product Description
Ultimate French has everything you need to learn French from scratch or to revive the French that you learned years ago. This course combines conversation and culture in an easy-to-follow, enjoyable, and effective format. It's the perfect way to learn French for school, travel, work, or personal enrichment.
Ultimate French Beginner-Intermediate includes:
•40 lessons in a comprehensive 416-page textbook:
Each lesson contains a lively and authentic dialogue, vocabulary, grammar and usage, step-by-step character writing, cultural highlights, and plenty of practice. The first ten lessons also include special pronunciation sections that will have you speaking right from the beginning. The book also contains review sections, readings, supplemental vocabulary sections, appendixes on essential French grammar, and a
French-English/English-French glossary.
•8 hours of recordings with an ingenious two-step approach:
Learn at home: Listen to the first set of recordings as you follow along in your textbook. Immerse yourself in French while you listen and repeat with the all-French recordings, and learn conversation, grammar, vocabulary, and more
Learn on the go: Then practice, review, and expand upon what you’ve learned with the second set of recordings. An instructor will guide you through each lesson, and since no reading is required, you can listen in the car, on the train, at the gym…anywhere!
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| Customer Reviews: Read 13 more reviews...
 fabulous resource! November 16, 2008
This resource is excellent. There is a written component, an at-home oral component that follows the written text, and a purely oral component that can be done while driving.
The program is done at your own pace so, depending on your level of French awareness, you can go through it quickly or slowly.
Very nice. I have recommended it to numerous people already.
So far - très bon October 16, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
AS described, but I think you need to know some French before you can use this product effectively.
 Slow Down! September 30, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
For a beginner, the dialogues on the CD are spoken much too quickly! I would understand if they were spoken quickly one time to be able to hear how they would sound naturally. But then they need to be repeated more slowly so that a beginning student can try to follow along. Even the repetition phase of the CD (when you repeat after the native speaker) goes too fast. For intermediate french, this would work, but not for beginning.
Balanced with Good Presentation September 20, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
For the analytically minded language learner who really wants to LEARN the language, this course is probably the most balanced available. It is well laid out and presented in a clear, concise manner. There are plenty of practice problems. The text itself takes you farther than most beginning language courses and the advanced book (sold separately) picks up where this one ends. There is lots of audio--two separate series on the CDs, one following the book, the other supplemental (can be listened to while you are driving, exercising, or whatever).
I like the Living Language books because they are self-contained and I don't feel as if I need to be working through other course books concurrently as I do when working through offerings from some other language-learning publishers. The only negative for me personally is that the vocabulary comes quite fast. I find myself getting way ahead in the grammar while being stalled with loads of vocabulary. This, however, is a personal weakness/strength issue and you may not have this problem. Other than that, I can't think of a thing that I don't like about this course.
How does this offering compare with other company's offerings? I would have to say that Living Languages and Hugo are my favorites. Hugo is great for stripped down, no fluff presentation. I really like their stuff. But, they tend to be very intense and typically do not have sufficient practice problems. Living Language is more balanced and takes you farther with the grammar and vocabulary. I'd say the two are tied for my favorites. Teach Yourself also has some great offerings... but choose wisely, because they are not consistent and offer some real dogs as well. Living Language and Hugo have a consistent format and you know what to expect from all of their courses.
Of course, this book will require study. It is not a "Learn French While You Watch TV and Eat Popcorn" or "French in Your Sleep" or "French in the Blink of an Eye" course. As long as you go into it knowing this and are willing and able to actually study and invest some time, you should have a good experience with Ultimate French. If you don't like to study and invest time, you'll have a great new dust collector in a protective clamshell sleeve.
 Didn't Work for Me September 14, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
Based on the reviews of this program in Amazon, I bought "Ultimate French" with great expectations. All I can say, after four days of attempting to learn French with the book and CDS, is that I am in complete awe that one else has rated this product a single star. On day four, I finally gave up, got my RMA number and shipped "Ultimate French" back to Amazon.
This program begins by presenting a dialog in French between two people and then translates the dialog into English. In the book, there is no pronunciation guide provided for this dialog and, for me, it's just too many words at once to follow. Later in the book you are given a list of how the vowels and consonants are pronounced, but basically that is it. In order to figure out the pronunciations I needed to constantly refer back to the lists.
There are two set of CDs in "Ultimate French." Set A provides just the French part of the dialog in the book and Set B provides both the French and English dialog. However, only parts of the book are repeated on the CDs and I found it extremely hard to follow the CDs while reading the book because the CD dialog jumped to different parts of the book. I finally gave up on using the CDs and put them away. Maybe this is a great program for French teachers, or maybe I'm just not the typical language student, but this program was of absolutely no value to me.
I believe a better alternative would be to purchase one of Michel Thomas' programs on French. I have been using the 8 Beginning French CD set and have been not only able to learn many French word and phrases, but have also found the process very enjoyable.
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