French is Fun

Personal Computer News

Usefulness 2/5

Features 3/5

Performance 4/5

Documentation 2/5

Overall Value 3/5

Andy Green

Bryan Skinner

FRENCH LANGUAGE LESSON Bryan Skinner brushes up his French with a Spectrum and an Oric. NAME: French Is Fun PRICE: £5.95 SYSTEM: Any Spectrum OTHER VERSIONS: German Is Fun PUBLISHER: CDS Microsystem, [redacted] NAME: Linkword PRICE: £12.95 SYSTEM: Oric 48K OTHER VERSIONS: German, Italian, Spanish PUBLISHER: Tansoft, [redacted] 2261/2/3/4. Also for Spectrum 48K, Silversoft, [redacted] Making your hols abroad this summer? Whether you'll miss your micro, or be glad to see the back it for a couple of weeks, between now and then it could help you learn a foreign language. Several packages are now available to help you learn a foreign tongue. There are many aspects to language, but Tansoft's 'French' and CDS Microsystems' 'French is Fun' both concentrate on vocabulary. Now. It's one thing to learn a few words, but to claim this is adequate to 'understand and be understood' (Tansoft) in a foreign language is pushing things a bit far. More realistic is CDS's aim to present the French language in a stimulating way. THEORY 'French' makes use of the Gruneberg Linkword system for vocabulary learning. Linkword is the brainchild of Dr Michael Gruneberg of University College, Swansea. Its basis is that visual association is a powerful mnemonic tool. Some famous mnemonists used techniques of remembering things by imagining them in places they were familiar with. To recall the information, they'd take an imaginary walk around the location, noting the things they'd 'left' there. This is a effective way to memorise bits of apparently unrelated information and the Linkword system exploits this psychological fact by suggesting situations to imagine which link an English word with a French one. IN USE For example, the French word for cat is 'chat' which sounds like Shah (as in Iran), so you're asked to visualise 'The late shah of Iran with a cat on his lap', to help you recall the French equivalent for the English word. Some of the 'linking' phrases used are strange, to say the least. How about 'Imagine driving your chevi to the levi with a goat in the back"? This is supposed to help you remember that the French for goat is chevre. There are ten sections to 'French', each concentrating on a different area of vocabulary such as business, travel and restaurants. There is a fair glossary for the tourist, with some intriguing inclusions: ugly, worker and mouse, for example. Over all you get some 350 words, and 'a basic grammar'. Basic is an appropriate adjective. With gender, for instance, you are told to imagine masculine nouns associated with a boxer, and feminine nouns with perfume, eg 'Imagine pouring a bottle of perfume over a goat to stop the smell'. Apart from the blatant sexism, the former is not useful because the subject of the masculine mnemonic is always the boxer, not the item itself. CDS also takes the pictorial route, but doesn't ask you to do the imaging. Making use of the Spectrum's graphics. 'French is Fun' builds up pictures, labelling items with the corresponding English and French words appearing at the top of the screen. There's a main menu to which you can return during any of the sub-sections by pressing Enter. This allows you to swap about eg Seaside to Cafe, quickly and easily. Each situation can be run in four modes: - Picture display with corresponding words. - Test of spelling/translation. - Phrases. - 1 & 3 together. The main problem is that the words are displayed at the top of the screen for only three seconds - hardly long enough to get a good look at them, let alone memorise spellings, so it would have been nice to have had control over this. Whenever you select a picture, the things in it always appear in the same order. This might make the words easier to learn, but it ain't half boring. One major advantage of this program over Tansoft's is that it has phrases, 15 per section. One nicely done section tells the time: you enter a time in standard 12hr notation, and the program writes up the time in French, then depicts it on a clockface. One of the best features of 'French is Fun' is that you don't ever press Enter. The program clearly isn't using INPUT (which Tansoft's does) and in test mode even buzzes if you try to enter an incorrect spelling. It also keeps a tally of your mistakes, unlike 'French'. In Tansoft's favour is that you get spoken words to listen to on the tape, but 'The pronunciation given in the course is only approximate'. And indeed, the words are not spoken by a native French speaker. Mind you they're not bad, and quite clear. While the Linkword system may help you remember roughly what a word sounds like. It's unlikely either to help you understand or be understood, unless you spend some considerable time practising listening and pronunciation. VERDICT I preferred 'French is Fun', largely because it uses graphics, which are well done, while 'French' is text-only. I found 'French' boring, but there's no doubt that it works. Pictorial association is an extremely powerful learning tool. Nevertheless, learning simple vocabulary is only a small part of learning a language. Both programs are a bit of a gimmick, just using a micro for the sake of it. A good text book gives you more pictures and phrases, where you also get details of grammar as well as important cultural information. A modern phrase book offers far more than either of these programs and at more or less the same cost. Better still, with a record or cassette-based course you could learn to say useful French phrases. However, the programs would be ideal for second or third year pupils because learning word lists is one of the hardest and dullest parts of French at school. Both of them will make the task easier and more fun.

Au bord de la mer.

Dans la rue.

Herisson (hedgehog) = hairy son...

Quelle heure est-il?

Sinclair User

Gilbert Factor 5/10

Memory: 48K Price: £5.95 The cassette insert for French is Fun claims that the program is designed for the student and the traveller, which reveals a basic flaw, since a less convenient and portable form of phrasebook could hardly be devised. Nevertheless, it is clear that a fair amount of thought and care have gone into the program. Attractive graphics accompany each of the various themes you can study, such as countryside, beach, cafe or street, and you can choose the method you want to use. In the picture-only mode, the French name for each element is given as it unfolds; there is also a picture and phrases mode, or pictures with a French-English or English-French test. The test consists of filling in the word required, with the computer accepting only the letters it is expecting. Unfortunately, the computer's spelling of French is not entirely reliable and some of the words in its vocabulary are unusual, to say the least. These are faults in what might otherwise have been an entertaining and instructive program. French is Fun is produced by CDS Micro Systems, [redacted].

Read it at Sinclair User Magazine Online

Crash

Producer: C.D.S. Memory Required: 48K Retail Price: £5.95 Grop: Various This is a French learning package with considerable versatility although it only teaches some basics, phrases and words which may be helpful to beginners and tourists. The program is menu prompted offering; The House, The Countryside, The Beach, The Cafe, The Street, The School, Numbers and Time. Whichever topic is selected you are then presented with four options; 1) Pictures only - which provides graphics, slowly building up, each new item annotated at the top in English and French: 2) Pictures with test - the graphics are repeated and you may opt to type in the French when the computer prompts with the English, or vice versa: 3) Phrases only - no graphics here, but a range of useful phrases in English like, 'Is it possible to go riding?' which may be translated into French by pressing key C: 4) Pictures and phrases - which runs through the pictures again and then into the phrases with your memory refreshed. Under Numbers, the screen displays imperial and metric equivalents whilst large figures at the top count up from 1, giving the French spelling beside them. Under Time, the display gives the days of the week and the months in English and French, displays a clock face and invites you to ask the time. You can key in a time, say 12.30, and this is then drawn on the clock face, and the French spelling for the time given. The program contains a lot of quite attractive graphics, some with simple animation, and it will obviously be valuable for young French beginners as well as adult starters. It won't, however, do much for your pronunciation!

Dans le jardin...