Review: French Essentials

I live in a bilingual country.  Canada.  Here we officially speak English and French.  Canadian French is different than France French, but it's still French so when this review came up I jumped on it.  I've bee wanting my lad to learn another language and was waffling between this and Latin, so this easily made the decision for me and we're learning French.

Product Information:

Vendor: French Essentials

Product received:Full Access Online Program (one full year, all modules, of their French lessons)

Price:Their pricing page can be found here. For what I received the cost is $149.95.    Currently, Modules 1-4 are available, with Module 5 coming very soon.    You do have options to getting the full program.  For instance you can get one module at a time for $69.95 with 90 days to download it.  You can learn more about pricing here.

Age Range: This is ideal for grades 3-8, but other ages can use it.
Pre-highschool - Grades 4/5 - 7/8 Modules 1 – 5
Middle school (junior high) - Grades - 8-9 Modules 5 & 6
High school Grades 10-12 Modules 7-10

When you sign up for French Essentials, you have access to multimedia PDF downloads, and various online materials (lessons, tests, culture).  The PDF files are multimedia, which means that if you click on highlighted words, you get an audio file, videos are also embedded within the pages.

We did not take the online placement test as my son has never been exposed to French before, so I didn't see the point in it.  :) 

What you find once you login is an easy to use Student area.  You will be taken to the download area where you can go to the module that you are using, from there to the lesson you have.  Each lesson itself is not terribly long, quite perfect in fact for my eight year old.  Long enough to keep him interested, short enough to not make him bored AND you can repeat them as often as you like.

It was rather bonus,... this past week we spent sometime with friends of ours.  We mentioned that the lad was learning French so our hostess immediately started talking French with the lad.  He was able to manage Salut and Au Revoir... but was lost with everything else.  Mind...he doesn't know a whole lot of French so I was pleased he remembered that much.  :)  AND he recognized the alphabet when she quickly rambled it off for him.  :)   It will be good to have someone else he can practice his French with.  :)   But it shows that he is learning.  :)

here my son is completing the test for lesson four

You can do the lessons as quickly or as slowly as you want.  They have a parent workbook that I will STRONGLY advise you to download as it provides exercises to help you retain the information.  An answer key is also provided.  Much to my delight I discovered they not only used the American form of English but included the British/Canadian spellings as well.  :)

It's not all on-line work.  Worksheets are provided to help solidify the teaching.   My son found the instructions easy to follow as well.   French Essentials is a downloadable French curriculum with online aspects including culture, fun exercises, lessons, tests and more.   It was designed by Greg and Irene Shone.   They use video to say words using a variety of speakers that help solidify how to say a particular word in French.   And that feature itself shows some differences and was an encouragement to my son as he struggled to say some of the words properly. 
"I say it more like that boy right mom"?  
"Yes you do lad". was my response  :)

So far in our studies we have come across flash cards, videos, written work, audio work.   He's had to read words and speak words.  He's listened to various speakers say the same word and he's needed to repeat those words.  He is learning.  :)

As you can see below they have a culture area which we loved.  It not only covered France, but also Quebec.    That of course makes our Canadian hearts smile.  :)  BUT it made us also do some more research as we said HEY I didn't know that.  Let's learn more.  It is so often good to take those rabbit trails. :)

I thoroughly enjoy using this program with my son.    I am so looking forward to using this program throughout the year.  I have a year to download the entire program and then to continue to use it as my son learns more and more french...the PDF's will continue to work!   Isn't that bonus! 

 It was so good to start our french language lessons using French Essentials and the staff are VERY helpful.    I recently needed to "kill" my computer (I think the official term would be to reinstall it?).. anyways, I couldn't get the program to work so I fumbled my way through explaining the problem and the very helpful staff got me quickly back on track.

I am trying to think of negatives.. and I honestly that this point.... haven't discovered any.   It just seems to be a very complete program that covers all the bases for learning a new language.  Oh.. just thought of one... would be nice to be able to download one whole module at a time... or even just 4-5 lessons at once.   Not sure how possible that is though.   Just would be nice to group them.

Anyways, those are my thoughts   If you'd like to know the thoughts of others of the review crew just click to read more reviews.