What our customer's say!

"Improves your pronunciation", This is a very professional tool to improve your languaje skills. I love to use the voice recognition feature and the accent assesment. It really helps you to speak clearly.

Lessons are very well designed and it covers everything: pronunciation, grammar, reading, listening, vocavulary etc..

It's an excelent tool :)

"Version 8.1 Great Product--but software flaws with Win XP", My daughter (age 12, and fixated on all things French) has been trying to learn French through a variety of media--workbooks and audiotapes, Muzzy videos, textbooks, none very stimulating--so I bought this CD for her to try.

First, let me start with the software itself: it was real discouraging when I first installed the French 8.1 Deluxe edition--kept getting error messages about MicServer Pass (error 26). Had to shut down probably 30 times the first few hours of use. Finally determined that there seemed to be some kind of conflict with other programs/graphics on my system--primarily a Japanese Hello Kitty screen saver installed. ALSO, I learned that you just can't click that mouse as fast as you'd like in the Play/Record mode, because if you click faster than, say, a 5 sec increment, the system freezes. I assume it's because the program just isn't developed enough to handle incoming audio recognition and cursor commands while simulataneously processing video/graphics/data transmission. Well, what do you expect, it didn't cost that much to begin with. So I have learned to slow my mouse clicking down a bit. In addition, I highly recommend you run AdAware, Spybot, and some kind of Utilities Clean-up/Fix program before installing this--and do what the installation instructions suggest, END all other programs running in the background. Finally, I would say that the less processes you have running while you are using this feature, the better!

About the program itself: I learned French in middle school, as well as 1 semester in college. (I also have a total of 3 years high school/college Spanish experience). So, based upon my knowledge of foreign languages, and the varieties of media I have used--the classroom, workbooks, textbooks, videos--I would say this software is the most entertaining method of learning a language. My daughter, who has NO foreign language experience, says this system of language learning works best for her, thus far.

This program--although not labeled so, take my word for it--is designed for conversational French. The strengths in this program are the French speakers and their pronounciation. Their phrases are short and to the point. In the beginning, the phrases are everyday phrases and the key to learning them is saying them over and over again; basically, MIMICRY [the accompanying 184-page reference book is just a written form of all the narrative you hear on the software, it is NOT a workbook or dictionary]. I told my daughter DO NOT RUSH through this, stick with the same lesson for at least a week. There are optional grammar notes for those interested or for those (like me) who never paid much attention to grammar exercises in school, but they are not the key to learning. After all, you don't see young children reading grammar books and they can speak quite well.

The voice recognition feature is not entirely accurate (I said ba-ba-ba-ba into the mic once and it gave me an excellent rating!) but it provides enough feedback so my daughter feels like she is making progress, mainly by copying the French speakers. It trains the ear to recognize French sounds.

As you go on in this program, you can pace yourself when things get a bit more challenging. Some of the phrases don't have much to do with everyday life, but they tend to teach the repetition/variation of common phrases over and over again, so it builds on the foundation. Using the program myself, I can determine where I am rusty. Also, I see my daughter decide (by herself and by the automatic scoring) where she needs to go back and review. The interactive functions--visual, written and verbal--really help reinforce what you've learned.

I would think that if one continued with the entire program and put as much effort into it as in a class--say, at least 1/2 hour a day up to 1 hour a day on weekends--then, by the end of the CD course one would be quite confident and fairly proficient at speaking and understanding spoken French, or the written level used by a daily newspaper in France.

"Doesn't work with Windows NT or 2000!", purchased this to spruce up my pronunciation but found that this version doesn't work with Windows 2000; however, I've now ordered version 8.1 which, supposedly, does work on my platform and will write another review after I've received and tried it.

"Pretty Good!", It's a pretty good program over all and pretty easy to use!

"Great for beginners or refresher course!", I think the other reviewer who rated this item and gave it very few stars may have confused this with another french language program because this one does not come with an audio tape as you see above. Instead it's 4 dvd-roms that are just terrific. Real practise conversations using your microphone, lots of grammar information, pronunciation drills and quizzes. This software is terrific. I am looking forward to their new version which is coming out soon. I hope it includes onscreen flashcards and more extensive grammar drills, quizzes and help. That would be my only suggestion. For additionaly french grammar help I would highly suggest; "Essential French Grammar" by Seymour Resnick, "French Verb Drills" by R.de Roussy de Sales, and you will also find extremely helpful, "Pronounce it Perfectly in French" by Christopher Kendris, PH.D which was released by Barron's. Good Luck everyone!

Read this reviews before You buy...

"If you can get it to work, it's a great product", I guess I'm one of the lucky ones -- I have version 8.0 (not 8.0.1) and it worked fine on both my old computer running Windows 98 and my new one with Windows ME. Reading through the other reviews I feel like I dodged a bullet. Hopefully The Learning Company will straighten this whole mess out because if you can get the program to work, it's excellent. I especially like the interactive conversations (complete with video of the actors) and the short film clips. I'm looking forward to getting TLC's Learn to Speak Spanish...after a careful look at the reviews, that is...

"Unorganized learning process", Although the software is extensive, with a workbook and audio tape, I found the organization of the program difficult. As a beginner in French, I thought that I would be able to learn more than I was able to from this program. In the first 2 weeks, I went through the program, listened to the tape in my car, and attempted to go through the workbook. What I found to be lacking was the fact that it focuses on vocabulary words and phrases before teaching the grammar and logic to the language. For those of you who want an actual understanding of French past a few vocab words, I suggest you look somewhere else. The tape was also hard to understand, even at the very beginning. The speakers talked too fast, so it made it hard for me to repeat after them since I was trying to figure out what they'd said exactly. Overall, it is a nice presentation, but I'd hoped to gain an overall understanding of the language, not just how to say, "I'm fine, thank you."

"Terrible Technical Support", As everyone else has noted, this program does not actually work, which makes it difficult to learn French. The only reason I am adding to the list of negative reviews is to follow through on a promise to The Learning Company's technical support department. Not only did they fail to get the program running, it took them over two weeks of correspondence to reach the conclusion that my problem was purchasing the non-functional version 8.0.1, despite the fact that I noted the version number in my original complaint. Every person I interacted with was lacking in both technical knowledge and basic customer support skills. Do not purchase this program, and I would avoid other Learning Company products as well.

"Don't even think about buying this!", Okay, so I read all the reviews, but I thought I could make it work. (I use Windows 98, and most of the problems were with 2000.) I couldn't, and I couldn't uninstall it except by brute force. It installed (I even tried the clean install, putting QuickTime into safe mode, and their other suggestions), but when I tried to open the program, it shut down and gave me an error message ("LTS caused a divide error"). After waiting 10 minutes for telephone tech support (my nickel) and explaining, the guy says, "Yeah, it doesn't work. Give us your disk number and we'll contact you when it is fixed." The most recent file in the program is dated 3/2/2000--if they haven't fixed it by now, I don't have much hope. Anyone should be ashamed to sell such a product.

"Useless piece of software", I did not manage to get Learn to Speak French 8.0 running on my computer. Contacting the technical support staff at The Learning Company was not helpful - the only advice they could give me was to return my software and ask for a refund... I took me about 6 hours of installation and re-installation, including a new, clean installation of Win98 - no way to get that stuff workig - annoying, useless piece of software