Mastering French Conversation, Unit 2

By: Scott Brians

Narrated by: Dr. Annette Brians

With the second installment of Mastering French Conversation, we expand our ability to converse in French.

As before, the drills allow you to practice hearing, understanding and formulating sentences in French. In this way you learn to think in French. You are preparing for live conversations on the streets of Paris.

This program is likely the most intensive and demanding audio self-help French program available. If you really want to master French conversation, this course is for you.

In this course, we will cover: 1) Indefinite Articles: un, une, des 2) Cardinal Numbers 3) Negative Adverb: ne ... pas 4) The verb 'avoir'

For course details, please see our website.

We wish you the very best,

Scott & Dr. Annette Brians

©2015 Scott Brians and Annette Brians (P)2015 Scott Brians and Annette Brians

Installs the basics as habit.

What I like about this approach is something I haven’t seen anywhere else. In starting French, there's a critical milestone to reach, but it’s a big step: you have to get able to calculate how to understand and construct sentences and questions together in real time, in terms of pronouns, liaison, mandatory contractions, gender, basic conjugation, negation, and inversion (for questions). That is, to respond to a basic question or form a basic sentence, you have to make multiple choices instantly. Mastering French II provides the practice that habituation, without emphasis on intellectualizing grammar or translating to and from English.

At every step you have to come up with the right syntax, progressing in steps, hearing yourself as well as the audio. There's no English, so you don't waste time thinking in in it. This is a completely different skill than writing answers in a workbook. Musicians who want to get good on their instrument call this kind of practice, “shed time,” and there’s no shortcut. Level II continues in the present tense, though there is some near-future (“going to leave”) and some auxiliary verbs (should go). It concludes with a good vocabulary of travel stuff; tickets, boarding pass, customs, etc. The material for MF-II is about three hours, but I’ve been though most sections multiple times, both with and without the pdf. Audio quality and French accent are both great (as I had verified by a native speaker).

Repetition is key

What made the experience of listening to Mastering French Conversation, Unit 2 the most enjoyable?

There are no abrupt increases in difficulty- the repetition present in this program ensures that you master more basic concepts before moving onto more advanced ones. Although repetition is a hallmark of this program, the authors do a good job at rotating the sections in a way that keeps the listener engaged with small increases in difficulty giving a constant feeling of progression. I was pleased to see that the authors incorporated much more of the vocabulary from the start of the unit into the practice and dialogue sections, and bring them up throughout the rest of the unit and into units 3-6.Additionally, the pronunciation is more enunciated and consistent relative to other programs I've used in the past, which was very helpful for me. Also, make sure you have the transcript- this audiobook is useless without it.

Mastering French Conversation unit 2

If you could sum up Mastering French Conversation, Unit 2 in three words, what would they be?

Well done throughout
.Unit 2 was a natural follow on to Unit 1. Using the FSI method of substitution drills really keeps you on your toes and shows how French conversation is constructed allowing for more automatic responses, I find dealing with similar structures but using different substituted words makes the memorization easier. As in unit 1, I recommend downloading the free transcript to ensure you know the words you are hearing. Seriously learning a foreign language is time consuming with lots of repetition but the rewards great. I was able to finish unit 2 before arriving in Tahiti. It was a joy to communicate fairly responsively, especially when I needed help to find my misplaced cell phone. If you put out the effort to speak to them, they will respond in spades which makes all the hard work worth it.