PeterMollenburg wrote:My recommondations are as follows.
1 Begin with Pimsleur- as many levels as you can get your hands on (instead of Michel Thomas in the beginning) as it starts of very slowly - which I believe is great for a real beginner in French- to hear the sounds enunciated clearly.
2 Then move on to Michel Thomas after completing Pimsleur- again as many levels as you can. The speech is clear, don't get me wrong, but Pimsleur is exceptional in it's slow but clearly enunciated build up in order to hear the language clearly. MT will get you really rolling with various verb constructions etc.
3 Hugo French in 3 Months - only if you would like a quick overview of the language- via a combination of grammar explanations, vocabularly, conversations and exercises focusing on the introduced grammatical concepts (audio available). It's not the most exciting course (but not as dry as FSI), nor the most comprehensive but it is very good at giving a quick overview of what French is about in a short period of time. If you're not after that, no problemo.
4 Assimil New French with Ease- Can't beat it. Awesome. Authentic, short exercises, shortish lessons, not grammar 'heavy', nice audio, interesting brief cultural notes on occasion, a lengthy but not daunting course, great stuff really.
5 French in Action (if you've got the money and time, this is a really "full" course if all components are used, if not the time or money, skip it).
I also like Fluenz French as the best computer based course with plenty of drills and nice presentation, but like FIA above you're not likely to have sufficient time nor money to get through it all.
If i had to recommend 2 courses from the above list I'd go with Pimsleur to get you slowly accustomed to the language and Assimil to get you up to speed somewhat via an enjoyable method that isn't too brief nor scarily comprehensive.
There are other great courses that i'm yet to dive into, this is the best of what i've experienced so far.
Highlighting above mine.
This is a good list of French courses. Having completed or partially worked on all the above, and knowing how thorough Peter is with course usage and selection, I'll agree that its a good sequence.
Where I diverge a bit is that it is much more than just a start.
So I'll offer to the OP the highlight above with two additions to Pimsleur and Assimil. Add a small grammar book and some graded readers and then you have a very solid starting point. Pimsleur for the slow roll that Peter mentioned, Assimil because it's just that good, a small grammar that fills in the cracks left by the two courses, and the graded readers because they are just so much fun to read.
