John Kelly
GBTrouble with Spoken Portions of Sessions in French 3 I just started French 3 and I'm having a lot of trouble understanding the spoken portions of the sessions. I understand this may be what we will hear when listening to native speakers, but it's almost impossible to get through a session. I went through 1 and 2 with very little trouble and I can understand what I learned from them when listening to any source of material. I watch and listen to videos on the web for listening practice.
Kimberly Fabian
GBUseful but tedious Fluenz French has been useful, however, I find the lessons to be tedious. It is the same format for every lesson. I understand why they designed it this way, but I appreciate a deviation every now and then. I purchased French 1-3 and to complete 90 lessons in the same format certainly does not make me look forward to the experience. In addition, some key conversational vocabulary is missing. For instance, I am almost finished with French 2, and I have yet to learn the vocab for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Yet I do know how to conjugate the verbs for I want, I must, I need and I would like. It seems like their prioritization is off. I am having to rely on other resources to teach me basic conversational phrases. I think the greatest enhancement to this program would be more focus on useful vocab and less on similar verbs and complex sentence structures that may never be used in a simple trip to France.
DONNA SMITH
GBFluenz - The Very, Very Best in Foreign Language Programs If you can't afford private foreign language training and want to learn a foreign language at your own pace, then Fluenz is the program for you. I have both the Spanish and German programs and really like how there is a tutor in each session to explain things. There are plenty of written exercises to do to test your comprehension and if you type an incorrect answer, you can easily find out what you did wrong, correct it, and move on. You can also record your voice so that you know what to improve as far as your pronunciation. Fluenz is far superior to Rosetta Stone. The software is also easy to download onto your computer, Ipad, or Iphone. Technical support is very good, too.
John WS
GBGreat, real world language learning tool I had thought about purchasing other language "learn at your own pace" software for Italian for a few years. I finally decided to go ahead and buy one and stumbled upon Fluenz. I had never heard of it prior to this and was about to buy Rosetta Stone since I had their free demo. Fluenz, had a different approach, however, which was to teach conversational Italian - words, phrases, etc. which would be used in the real world. All the lessons are presented in an interesting way with explanations of why words and phrases are used. I decided I'd buy it and I'm extremely pleased with the teaching approach. It teaches you the language in a way you can use almost immediately with phrases which you will use on a trip to Italy - what you learn is everyday speaking. Definitely would recommend!
Ron
GBGreat German lessons! More than 40 years ago I studied German in college. I only wish Fluenz had been around then! Recently, I spent several weeks going through Fluenz German 1 before our recent trip to Germany to relearn the language. It was a very pleasant experience and I felt I really learned a lot in a short period of time. I wanted to be able to speak the language to some degree because we were doing a driving vacation and going to small towns where English might not be spoken...or at least not spoken well. It paid off! I was very conversational. Fluenz is a great product! I highly recommend it for anyone who wants to learn a new language.