About the Book
The Easiest and Fastest Way to Learn French
Whether you want to travel, communicate with friends or colleagues, reconnect with family, or just understand more of what's going on in the world around you, learning French will expand your horizons and immeasurably enrich your life. The best part is that it doesn't have to be difficult or take years to master. Thirty minutes a day is all it takes, and we get you speaking right from the first day. Pimsleur courses use a scientifically-proven method that puts you in control of your learning. If you've tried other language learning methods but found they simply didn't stick, then you owe it to yourself to give Pimsleur a try. Why Pimsleur?
- Quick + Easy - Only 30 minutes a day.
- Portable + Flexible - Core lessons can be done anytime, anywhere, and easily fit into your busy life.
- Proven Method - Works when other methods fail.
- Self-Paced - Go fast or go slow - it's up to you.
- Based in Science - Developed using proven research on memory and learning.
- Cost-effective - Less expensive than classes or immersion, and features all native speakers.
- Genius - Triggers your brain's natural aptitude to learn.
- Works for everyone - Recommended for ages 13 and above. What's Included?
- 30, 30-minute audio lessons
- 60 minutes of reading instruction to provide you practice reading French
- in total, over 17 hours of audio, all featuring native speakers
- a Reading Booklet and User's Guide What You'll Learn
Builds upon skills taught in Pimsleur's French Levels 1-3. You'll be speaking and understanding French with near-fluency and with a broad range of conversational skills. In Level 4 the pace and conversation moves more rapidly, accelerating exposure to new vocabulary and structures, and approaching native speed and comprehension. You'll learn to speak about your professional and personal life, needs, likes and dislikes, and to create complex sentences discussing the past, present, future, conditional and subjunctive. A few of the topics included in French Level IV
- Business: Traveling for business, attending a conference, booking and canceling train tickets, looking for and buying a house in France.
- Personal life: Discussing where you've lived, what you enjoy, going through hard times, marriage and divorce, raising teenagers, missing loved ones, moving.
- Activities: Reading, hiking, gardening, skiing, going to the theater, watching TV, walking around, doing home renovations.
- Shopping: trying on and buying various items of clothing, asking for colors and sizes, buying gifts and souvenirs, going to the open-air and the flea market, haggling over prices, negotiating a discount, discussing shipping options.
- Vacationing: going to the beach or swimming pool, sampling foods, preparing a picnic, boating, dealing with crowds.
- Dealing with Unforeseen Events: feeling ill, calling a doctor, losing or forgetting personal items, being caught in a strike, witnessing a crime, falling in love.
- The French Character: Learn to think like a French person, using irony and sarcasm, making huffing sounds, showing nonchalance and disinterest, and expressing nostalgia and fatalism. After Lesson 30, a short story broken down into 20 manageable segments (over one hour) is provided for practice reading French. The Pimsleur Method
We make no secret of what makes this powerful method work so well. Paul Pimsleur spent his career researching and perfecting the precise elements anyone can use to learn a language quickly and easily. Here are a few of his "secrets" The Principle of Anticipation
In the nanosecond between a cue and your response, your brain has to work to come up with the right word. Having to do this boosts retention, and cements the word in your mind. Core Vocabulary
Words, phrases, and sentences are
