Podcasts

I've been listening to the first few lessons of Coffee Break French lately and have found it to be a good podcast for learning. One of the weak parts of Michel Thomas' CDs was the pronunciation, but they spend a bit more time in this series pointing out details of the pronunciation in this podcast which is good.

I haven't gotten the "premium content" for CBF, just the free podcasts from iTunes, but I don't think I will since these are primarily being used during my commute anyway where I just want audio. They also look relatively pricey (especially given the current exchange rates), and I'm not sure there's a ton of value in it the additional materials.

I've also found some useful aids/materials recently. The first is a compilation of the 681 most common verbs in PDF form. The other one is a dictionary plugin for Chrome that lets you double click on words to look them up (or even Google Translate them), which I recommended to anyone who wants a bit of help in reading articles in French or any language you're learning.

8 Hours of Audio Lessons Down

I have been primarily listening to audio lessons on the way to/from work on the subway, as that is my big block of unoccupied time in the day. I started with the Michel Thomas Foundation Course, which is ~8 hours of lessons covering a variety of topics. It is overall quite good, and teaches you a lot in a fairly short period of time. That being said, it is somewhat all over the place in terms of what material is taught, but it is a reasonable introduction.

The one reason I may not have gotten as much out of it as I could have was because they don't give you a lot of time to think of your answer before telling it to you, assuming you can hit pause to think it out. That is somewhat less ideal when on the subway with my mp3 player in my pocket, or walking around NYC - I can't really have it out constantly to hit pause/play without it being very inconvenient.

I'm trying to decide what to do next, both in selecting more audio to listen to as well as additional supplemental options (time/energy permitting). I am looking at some Podcasts on iTunes as a way to get some fresh potentially more 'real world' lessons in, as what I've heard of Pimsleur seems somewhat geared toward tourists.

If I do want to go with the more traditional lessons there are some more Michel Thomas CD sets I could get such as the Advanced course, the Vocabulary Builder, etc. I could also try out the Pimsleur CDs. Also as a result of my point above about not having ample time to respond/think on my first run through I may go back and re-listen to the Foundation Course too to see how much I've retained.

I'm not sure how much I know of the language yet, but my interest has been piqued and I'm ready to keep learning more.