Product Overview
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 whats going on in the world around you, learning French will expand your horizons and immeasurably enrich your life.
The best part is that it doesnt 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 youve tried other language learning methods but found they simply didnt 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 its 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 brains natural aptitude to learn.
- Works for everyone Recommended for ages 13 and above.
Whats 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 Users Guide
What Youll Learn
Builds upon skills taught in Pimsleurs French Levels 1-3. Youll 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.
Youll 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 youve 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 selected for their usefulness in everyday conversation. We dont overwhelm you with too much, but steadily increase your ability with every lesson.
Graduated Interval Recall
Reminders of new words and structures come up at the exact interval for maximum retention and storage into your long-term memory.
Organic Learning
You work on multiple aspects of the language simultaneously. We integrate grammar, vocabulary, rhythm, melody, and intonation into every lesson, which allows you to experience the language as a living, expressive form of human culture.
Learning in Context
Research has shown that learning new words in context dramatically accelerates your ability to remember. Every scene in every Pimsleur lesson is set inside a conversation between two people. There are no drills, and no memorization necessary for success.
Active Participation
The Pimsleur Method + active learner participation = success. This method works with every language and every learner who follows it. You gain the power to recall and use what you know, and to add new words easily, exactly as you do in English.
The French Language
French is spoken by 55 million speakers in France, 3 million in Belgium, 1.5 million in Switzerland, 6.5 million in Canada, and 5 million in former French and Belgian colonies. It is an official language in 44 countries and an official language of the United Nations. An estimated 50 million people around the world speak French as a second language.
Tech Talk
- CDs are formatted for playing in all CD players, including car players, and users can copy files for use in iTunes or Windows Media Player.
