SmartFrench - Introduction to French, Vol.1
We recently received an email questioning our 5 star reviews. We felt compelled to respond to our customer. This is our response: Dear X, To try to be seen by customers me and my team have to work extremely hard. We don't have the budget to appear on top of pages like others do. I am not a teacher at university either who could have his students write comments. It has another advantage though. We are necessarily closer to our customers and we like to help them as much as we can. What happens with the reviews is the result of a close contact with them. When customers write a favourable comment for delivery adding that the product is good, we ask them for a review. We offer free advice. They can call us to chat in French. We replace lost booklets for free. We give lists of vocabulary for free to all our buyers if they need. Naturally if they like our products, we ask them for a review and we ask them to paste it on all our products (as they are related). I am happy when our customers write good reviews and even so if it's written with spirit. If they copy from other reviewers, it's their choice. We love our customers and they love us. Everything can happen. We have once received an unfavourable review, which, we could prove, had been written by a competitor... and he pasted it to several of our products, just like another opinion below! At Smart Language we would never think of writing a bad review, for any reason except if we'd returned a product and would be denied a refund. By the way, we have always refunded when asked and if you want to return yours, it's absolutely fine. Our method is unconventional and certain people will not like it and it's their right. We have been very fortunate over the years to communicate by email or on the phone with so many wonderful people. We received the generous free help of writers, lawyers, journalists, and professors, who had bought our products and wanted to help us (for the description, corrections or else)... --Response to customer... Our technique was born from the difficulties we experienced ourselves in communicating in English. It was absolutely necessary for us to help people avoid the same difficulties. That method really came from the heart and I am convinced that there is no better product on the market that develops the faculty of listening to the language and speak it like ours does. When a mother emailed us and told us that she wanted to make sure the product was suited for her son as the money was limited, I honestly told her that it was not designed for young people. She decided to try it anyway and afterwards, she emailed me again and told me: '... our son is using the product and making leaps of progress already after years of frustration and struggling'. Of course, once again I asked her to paste her comment everywhere possible. I am very and personally sorry if that offends some. With the budget we have, I don't know what else to do for our products to be discovered. The words of mouth have been good so far. On the descriptions we always mention to either start with the SmartFrench volumes of introduction or work with them simultaneously. With all the reviews, emails and calls, I have realized that the cdrom is most appreciated by people who have already struggled with French or who have been disappointed when travelling to France. When I was recording the lessons, our French sound engineer told me the method was right because he never took any English class. I asked him how long it took him to feel comfortable speaking English, he told me one year. For me, after 5 years of English classes, I could not have a regular comfortable conversation in English when I arrived in the US. It took me three years to feel comfortable. It seems that fixing the problem was harder than listening first to something you can't understand and mimicking when someone --Response to c --Response to customer - suite... Our technique was born from the difficulties we experienced ourselves in communicating in English. It was absolutely necessary for us to help people avoid the same difficulties. That method really came from the heart and I am convinced that there is no better product on the market that develops the faculty of listening to the language and speak it like ours does. When a mother emailed us and told us that she wanted to make sure the product was suited for her son as the money was limited, I honestly told her that it was not designed for young people. She decided to try it anyway and afterwards, she emailed me again and told me: '... our son is using the product and making leaps of progress already after years of frustration and struggling'. Of course, once again I asked her to paste her comment everywhere possible. I am very and personally sorry if that offends some. With the budget we have, I don't know what else to do for our products to be discovered. The words of mouth have been good so far.   On the descriptions we always mention to either start with the SmartFrench volumes of introduction or work with them simultaneously. With all the reviews, emails and calls, I have realized that the cdrom is most appreciated by people who have already struggled with French or who have been disappointed when travelling to France. When I was recording the lessons, our French sound engineer told me the method was right because he never took any English class. I asked him how long it took him to feel comfortable speaking English, he told me one year. For me, after 5 years of English classes, I could not have a regular comfortable conversation in English when I arrived in the US. It took me three years to feel comfortable. It seems that fixing the problem was harder than listening first to something you can't understand and mimicking when someone speaks. Repeating dialogs seemed more efficient.   The dilemma we had was to call the level of the cdrom 'beginner level'. How to explain that learning grammar is one thing and listening is another, that you can be intermediate or advanced in French and still a beginner at listening? We chose to take a risk to disappoint a few but to give the opportunity to all. At least, they would see with the lists of vocabulary that 65% of any conversation, casual or not, regardless of the person or the theme, are just basic words.   We developed SmartFrench not as a quick fix but for the serious learner. If you are lost after two lessons, it's normal to me. I was lost after 5 years. But if you stick with SmartFrench, you will have a chance to have a lasting result. If people want to learn only a few casual sentences, the SmartFrench for travellers product is the one to get.   I would suggest that you get more than one method, like you had more than one teacher for any subject you have learned in your life so far. All methods will teach you something and are good in that sense. We are always welcoming our competition and I am not concerned if they are better or not as good. They are very different. Some will fit you more than others. SmartFrench was conceived to be a long time companion to refer to along the road, a method to learn French from and also one to use and check periodically the progress made. Cordially, Christian Aubert Smart Language --Response to customer - suite