Paroles en situations

I've found one relatively new book to be very useful for my studies in French. It has six "dossiers"

1 Écouter des annonces dans les lieux publics
2 Écouter des messages sur des répondeurs téléphoniques
3 Écouter des messages d'accueil sur des serveurs vocaux
4 Interagir au téléphone en situation d'urgence
5 Obtenir des renseignements par téléphone
6 Interagir dans des lieux publics

VERY practical.



One of the problems I've always faced is attuning my ears to spoken French. I might be able to cope in France if everyone wrote down what they say (in legible handwriting) - but the speed of the spoken languages is often too fast for "a bear of very little brain" like myself. 'Paroles en situations' works through a number of situations - with exercises which focus on different parts of the conversation in turn. There are 'transcriptions' of each 'conversation'. It is that in-depth, repeated interaction which I have found so useful. The book also contains a link to the Hachette website which allows one to load the activities on to a computer. I use both the book and the computer exercises.