Écho - Niveau A1 - Guide pédagogique - Ebook - 2ème édition (French Edition)

This book is the required text in a beginner French course I am taking. Years ago, I studied French for five years in high school, so I am not totally at sea with the language, but this book defeats me. I understand that it is designed for immersion, but the listening exercises are impossible because the DVD ROM does not play the audio pieces which are supposed to accompany the 'see and say' or the dictation practices. So much for the immersion since you can not access the audio and miss perhaps a third of the book. Do NOT even consider buying this text if you are trying to learn the language without a class. You would be much better to buy the Wiley French self-teaching guide and find online sites for pronunciation and watch some French films with the captions on

Confusing and hard to work with. It is okay for a class with additional material and someone to help you work out the details. Also I have never been able to read the dvd that comes with the book. Inquiries with the published to get a readable format have been less that positive.

This is a good resource but my caveat to this comment is that it is probably best if you are studying French in some way at the time of using it. Without doing a French class concurrently I suspect I'd find this a little more difficult to navigate. The exercises are clear and helpful, and it's not overwhelming providing you take your time as you go.

The book deserves 4 or 5 stars, the package 1 or 2 stars, so I have given it the average of 3 stars. The book seems to be excellent, but the DVD-Rom will not run in any media player I have. The instructions in the back of the book (in French) say "installez VLC Media Player, le célèbre lecteur multimédia open source." VLC was no more helpful than all the other media players. The problem seems to be a European CODEC that no media player recognizes or can locate. This is really too bad for what appears to be an inspired, clever book. I bought it to evaluate it for purchase by students in a French program. But it's far too expensive for the package if the audio and video lessons are not included. So sadly I have to reject it.

ok

just started using this series.

Some translation would be helpful

Excellent