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Oxford Take Off In French (Take Off in) | 
 enlarge | Author: Oxford Dictionaries
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Category: Book
List Price: $45.00
Buy New: $25.99
You Save: $19.01 (42%)
New (30) Used (9) from $25.99
Avg. Customer Rating:  2 reviews
Sales Rank: 694918
Media: CD-ROM
Edition: 3
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 256
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.4
Dimensions (in): 8.2 x 5.2 x 1.6
ISBN: 0199534330
Dewey Decimal Number: 440
EAN: 9780199534333
ASIN: 0199534330
Publication Date: May 5, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: BRAND NEW
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Product Description
Take Off In French makes learning or brushing up on the language quick, easy, and fun. Follow an intergrating course including activities and dialogues with native speakers so you can feel confident in day-to-day conversation. The course offers expert help when you are travelling with a handy phrase book and mp3 audio download for practice while on the move.
This complete language learning kit contains everything you need to speak, read, write and understand French, and gives you flexibility when learning. The pack includes a clear, easy-to-use coursebook, full mp3 audio available to download, 5 audio CDs, including an extra practice CD, a handy travel dictionary and phrasebook, and online activities and dialogues to support you as you pick up your new language.
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| Customer Reviews:
Good conversational French builder August 28, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
This is the best "conversational" French course I've ever used. One big reason is the way they make a number of good suggestions for people who want to try to sound natural speaking French. Some examples: they suggest you record yourself so you can hear what you really sound like, warn you about very informal expressions like "salud", and suggest several times that you try to "stand back" and listen to utterances to get overall idea rather than getting lost in getting all the precise details of the sentence. They even suggest things to listen for in different situations. These are all pieces of good advice for a language learner, especially the self-learner who does not have the benefit of a teacher to relate these kinds of things to them.
The course consists of a book, dictionary, and 5 CDs. The material is available both on the CDs (4 main CDs plus one practice) and via MP3 (downloadable, instructions included). One nice feature is that try to provide people's voices in authentic situations: rising and falling, with emotions, even fading out and in. This is very valuable, as my most difficult area in understanding Spanish comes when people mumble or their voices fade in and out. The practice CD is particularly a jewel: it's easy to overlook or relegate it for an undefined "some day", but that would be a huge mistake. It provides great listening practice, and includes additional tips on French usage that you want to know if you are interested in becoming even semi-fluent in the language. Even if you don't want the MP3s, log on to the on-line site anyway: extra practice in listening and other activities are available there.
They also do a good job integrating the listening, which (in my opinion) should be paramount when learning a modern language, with reading and writing. The CD frequently directs you to the book to do exercises. I believe this is the proper order, using the CD as the main reference and the book being auxiliary.
I would have given the course 4.5 stars if I could have. My only real issue with this course, as with virtually any similar course, is that it is too short to really learn the language. I have tried many short language courses in a number of languages and several longer ones and I find that the longer ones are the only ones that leave me halfway prepared to actually use the language. Also, like most similar courses, it heavily concentrates on greetings, restaurants, railway tickets, etc. - in other words, the French that a typical traveler would need. There can be some benefit to this method, but I believe a more thorough grounding in the language is really necessary to feel at all comfortable talking to real people.
So, this is a good little course to help build up your ability to use your French conversationally. But to really feel comfortable with the language even in conversational situations, I would recommend a more thorough course like "Mastering French" or the Pimsleur series. Spend some time learning the basics of the language, then return here and use this good little course to brush-up your conversational ability.
A Course for Everyday Situations August 26, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Take Off in French is a surprisingly heavy little box of language learning CDs and books. It comes in a nice fold-open box with a textbook style finish that contains the following components:
1.5 CDs
2.250-page course book related to the lessons on the CDs.
3.150-page travel dictionary/phrasebook
4.Instructions for online activities and for downloading the audio in MP3 format (gives a code for this).
How it works:
The CDs and course book are absolutely meant to be used together. Listening to the CDs you will hear French in dialogue form and in phrases, but the translations/vocab are found in the book. Each of the 14 lessons is divided into activities. Most of the activities are in both the book and CD and are easy to follow, however a couple of activities are only found on the CD. In this case the book will read something like: "now do activities 4 and 5 on the recording." There is more than one speaker, which is nice for gaining exposure to the accents used by different people.
The Content:
After a 2 min, 20 second intro that describes how to use the course, it jumps right into the following lessons.
Lessons:
1: Starting Out
2: Asking the way
3: Numbers, times and dates
4: Accommodation
5: Personal Information
6: Shopping
7: Eating Out
8: Getting Around
9: Health & Fitness
10: Free Time
11: At Home
12: Making Plans
13: All in the Past
14: The World of Work
Travel Dictionary and Phrasebook:
This slightly larger than pocket reference is like a nicely organized dictionary based on many, many topics such as accessories, celebrations, apartment living, birds & animals, etc. It has a ton of info in it - very thorough. However, I don't see it so much as the typical travel phrasebook that would be used for asking questions like "where do I pick up my luggage?" or "will you please stamp my passport?" or "how do I call the United States?"
My Experience and Opinion:
Several years ago I learned a decent amount of French in preparation for my first trip to Europe. I spent almost a year working on it on a daily basis. The content of this course will NOT cover all that one would need for a trip to France. Notably absent are some basics like info on the arrival to a French airport - relating to customs, immigration, passports, luggage, etc. A supplemental course would be needed to cover those topics. However, this course does give a nice base for the language once you have arrived and are looking for more "everyday" types of conversations and activities.
I definitely recommend Take Off In French for students and for someone who plans on living or staying in France for an extended period of time - that will be dealing with normal, everyday life situations.
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