French Without Toil

French Without Toil

French without Toil (Assimil Spare-Time Daily Courses)

French Without Toil was the first Assimil program I purchased. I used it as a textbook at night school, then bought the audio recordings before travelling to France. The program enabled me to get by in difficult situations. I followed it up with Assimil German (I taught in a German school and did public speaking in German) then with Assimil Italian, Spanish, Russian and Dutch.
The books are divided into short lessons, one per day, which take about 30 minutes. I usually broke these up into segments of ten minutes several times a day. I found I could get by in the language and hold a simple conversation after a couple of months and was fairly fluent after about four or five months.
The program is in two “waves”. In the first wave you concentrate on understanding what you read and hear. In the second wave, after a couple of months, you go back to the beginning and do some exercises, which by now you find easy, as you continue with the first wave to the end. I found I had a good knowledge of grammar and sentence construction. I would certainly use the program if I were studying for a school examination or if I had to work in the country where I needed the language.
The lessons are fun, each day’s lesson contains a cartoon to illustrate something from the lesson, and you learn about the people and their customs.