After Pimsleur?

[paulandtoby]

Hi,
I am almost finished level 3 of Pimsleur French and have been enjoying it immensely. I would like to continue learning more french after I finish the Pimsleur program (especially increasing my vocabulary) and was wondering which language course would be best to move towards.
I would LOVE a Level 4 Pimsleur French!
Toby

[Torsten]

Hi Toby,

Maybe there will be a fourth level of Pimsleur French some day. In the meantime you might want to try and get some French audio books.
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[Jamie (K)]

When deciding what to do after the Pimsleur programs, you have to consider what the Pismleur programs really do, and what the gaps are.

Pimsleur programs give you a lot of common phrases, and they help you learn to manipulate and vary some of them. However, they do not give you a comprehensive enough foundation in French to begin processing things like French audiobooks or movies, or to really communicate in French. What you need to do, therefore, is to get something that will start you out in French over again in a fuller, deeper way, and that will give you a better command of the structure.

For this purpose, I think the old US Foreign Service Institute (FSI) courses are ideal. At the beginning, you may think, "I know all this stuff!" but very quickly they get to more sophisticated language, and your French will improve quickly.

These FSI courses are copyright free, so they're available in many places at many different prices. Probably the cheapest way to get French is to buy Barron's "Mastering French". It's the FSI French Basic Course repackaged and relabelled. The course is also available from various mail-order houses (e.g., http://multilingualbooks.com) and from the US government (www.ntis.gov).

If you can't get that, CLE International in France has some really nice materials you could self-teach from (http://www.cle-inter.com/catalogue_eng.htm). Make sure you get the audio CDs with them.

Whatever you do, after Pimsleur III, I think you should start with beginning materials from other publishers, because the end of Pimsleur is the beginning of your language learning. And get yourself a grammar book. I don't care if you don't like grammar; it's good for you.

Good luck!