I’ve just finished going through all the French course content, I notice that it has now changed to infinite play which assume no new content rather revising all previous content.
I thought I’d give some feedback on the course now that I’ve gone right through it.
First of all I think it’s fantastic course and has been a brilliant aid to my French learning. It’s the best method I’ve come across which get’s you speaking from day 1 and generating patterns in the target language.
Before I go into too much detail about my thoughts, it’s worth saying that the SSI method is not new to me as I completed the 2 Spanish courses back in the early days when SSi Borg was but a dream.
I wasn’t totally new to French either as before SSI French came out I was doing quite a lot of listening to French podcasts and trying to use the Comprehensible input method to aid my learning. This familiarity with the language certainly helped massively with SSI challenges as the sounds and patterns were often familiar rather than being completely new. The SSI method has really helped turn my passive knowledge of the language in to a more active knowledge and also with the pronunciation. I find the French pronunciation quite challenging (especially compared to Spanish) but like I say SSI French has been a big help to begin to overcome this.
I’ve reached a point now where speaking with others is by far the most important practice for me. I unfortunately don’t know anyone who speaks French but have found the relatively new AI platforms a huge help with this. I’ve began using LanguaTalk AI for conversation practice which is really helping me become conversationally competent in the language.
As far as things to iron out with the SSIFrench course there are a few things (and I think most if not all have been mentioned in other posts) but here’s the general bugs that need tweaking:
- Incorrect use of the subjunctive in simpler sentences when building up to the main target sentence
- Incorrect pronouns with reflective verbs again in simpler sentences when building up to the main target sentence
- Incorrect preposition in some of the simpler sentences when building up to the main target sentence
- The odd bit of gibberish (strangely always by the female voice) after the sentence in French
- When very short words are introduced they are sometimes unintelligible or in the wrong language
- Sometimes when putting smaller sentences together, the sentence you are challenged to say doesn’t make sense.
All minor things which do not overshadow the fantastic resource that the SSI method is!
While I’m here, some of the podcast/videos that have helped me are:
French Comprehensible Input - YouTube
French mornings with Elisa - YouTube
Dai