Instant Recall French Vocabulary: Learn and Remember French Faster than You Ever Imagined Possible!: Learn and Remember French Faster Than You Ever Imagined Possible! (Instant recall) - Books (Michael Gruneberg, Audio CD)

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Customer Reviews of Instant Recall French Vocabulary: Learn and Remember French Faster than You Ever Imagined Possible!: Learn and Remember French Faster Than You Ever Imagined Possible! (Instant recall)

Rob
UK
20th December 2007

No mistakes - except in the reviews
In response to the person who wrote:

I haven't read this book but I was struck by the 'official review' apparently taken from the back cover of the book.

The French word for bread is "pain" not "pan" - the method may work but if the information being taught is inaccurate this is not a useful tool.

Well, I do own this, and the mistake is in the review, not the product.

The back of the box actually says:

The french for bread is pain. (PAHn)
Imagine putting loaves of bread in a pan.

(Because, although spelt pain, it is not pronounced pain).

This is indeed a good method of learning vocabulary.

This won't teach you French, on its own - its not meant to. What it is meant to do is teach vocabulary, and it does this well. This works really well with the Michel Thomas Foundation course. The latter is really good at teacing the structure of the language etc. This is good for adding some extra vocab.

jakkisr
Leeds, England
5th September 2007

Helpful as a refresher and for beginners
The cd uses word association and opportunities for you to practice phrases before moving onto the next phrase. The author speaks and explains things to you then gets 2 'students' (1 is quite good at french, the other is finding it tricky!) to repeat the word before you have a go. He points out what the students got right and wrong and clarifies any common pronunciation errors. I enjoyed practising my rather rusty pronunciation alongside the 'students' on the cd. My husband didn't know any french before listening and although he chose not to speak any french on holiday he could certainly recognise and understand spoken and written french better than he could previously. I liked the pace of the cd, the word association techniques may seem a bit tacky but they do actually work! It's not advanced and it wouldn't get you through a GCSE or a business environment but its a pleasant way to refresh your memory or practice your pronunciation of very useful words and phrases for everyday life and social situations.

Colette
France
17th August 2007

Mistakes abound
I haven't read this book but I was struck by the 'official review' apparently taken from the back cover of the book.

The French word for bread is "pain" not "pan" - the method may work but if the information being taught is inaccurate this is not a useful tool.

I won't be buying it.

R. M. Robinson
South Africa
5th October 2006

only for the feeble-minded
The writers/producers of this work must have assumed that their potential listeners are mentally retarded idiots. Long pauses are left to enable one to remember the most simple words. A breathless and over-enthusiastic American woman invites one to do things such as "imagine a toilet on top of the Eiffel tower", in an effort to assist one to remember that the French word is equivalent to the English word. At that point I decided to abandon the cd. There is, after all, a limit. In addition, the usefulnesss of the work is greatly reduced by the absence of articles before nouns. It assists one little to know that chair is 'chaise', without also knowing that it is 'la chaise'. Had the ratings permitted me, I would have rated this at a minus.

17th September 2003

Instant Recall - It really works
These cd's are a real gem. Great fun to use and they really do work. I would highly recommend them as a fun way of increasing your Spanish vocabulary.