This book is well written, but the CD won't run on my Windows Vista 64-bit PC. I spent over a month trying to work with avbooks support, but they failed to resolve the CD issue.

I would give this product a higher rating based on the book alone, but without the audio functioning properly, the package as a whole is unsatisfactory. The French language is full of silent letters and pronunciations that contrast phonetically with English phonics, so the audio CD is vital to "Learning French," and this product fails without it.

On a more basic level, I recommend the "French in 10 minutes a day" book. It's great for beginners, and the illustrations are a great aid in quick and easy learning.

The "Easy French Reader" is another recommendation, although it is in a different class. You will need a French-English dictionary (free online) or Babelfish (free online) to use the book as a beginner. But in terms of reading comprehension versus effort expended, this well-designed book has paid off more than any other for me so far. After getting through only the first 15 pages, my comprehension of French increased significantly, and I gained a lot of confidence and momentum!

I got this book because it has a pronounciation guide after most of the french. I haven't seen this in other french learning books. I put the DVD in and was unhappy that it started at the beginning of the book and read right through. I could not skip pages nor go back. So, I think something is wrong with the DVD, as noted from another writer's review. The second time I tried to bring up the DVD, it only gave me an error code.

I noticed that several reviewers did not get a CD with this book. If you look at the cover though you should have a CDROM with the book. The AV book CD looks like it should really be great, but the CD FAILs to install properly. I have contacted the publisher, but have not had any luck resolving this problem. I think the book is very good. I think there should be more comprehensive exercises, though!

this is a good book to have in hand; you can not remember everything in the book but practice makes perfect and it's good to read it over and over.

To me this book is only useful for quick reference. It should be called the Complete Idiot's Guide to Reviewing French Material. I am not a beginner, but I am not advanced either. I can tell that this book is trying to mesh both levels together so that BOTH the beginner and the more advanced Frenchie can get the benefits. But honestly, this book does too much all at once. Before you even get to know the basic vocabulary it gives you long lists of words that are useful, but not words that should be put onto one or two pages. And I found the whole format and style of the book to be either annoying or just confusing. I am not saying that French learning guides need to be all fun and easy, but it doesn't necessarily have to be really boring either. I think there are better books out there than this one. Try French Without the Fuss, which actually has a CD where you can hear native speakers and have the dialogue in front of you (it's also in a reasonable price as well). I have learned a lot from that book in its first 2 pages alone than I did in this one. Get something that's more worth the money. Try French Without the Fuss, and why not go to the kids section in the book store and check out the French books. As silly as it may seem you actually learn a lot of French vocab---and have more fun with learning the language too.