After having reviewed several products for learning French, we conclude that the À Moi Paris course by French Today is by far the most thorough and comprehensive audio French course on the market today. Unlike other leading products such as Rosetta Stone or Duolingo, À Moi Paris is an excellent course for learning French and offers the complete package.
Review of À Moi Paris – I love Camille’s course!
Bonjour! My name is David and I’m a French teacher. Before we look at the details of the À Moi Paris today, I must share something.
I have known Camille, the author and voice behind the audio course since 2016. I met with her and her husband, Olivier on Martha’s Vineyard for breakfast in 2016. We have worked closely together in many ways over the years. In fact, if you buy her course through a link on this review page I will make a commission.
I only did my review of À Moi Paris now (in August, 2023) and I can’t believe I didn’t write it earlier. In short, my conclusion is that I love the course and would recommend it to my students!
À Moi Paris vs. other leading courses
My biggest criticism of most other leading apps and courses such as Rosetta Stone or Babbel is that they’re heavily based on the use of flash cards. The basic system is that the app or course shows you a picture and you’re encouraged to memorize the meaning with a flash card.
Duolingo is the worst of them as the system is based on computer-generated phrases that have nothing to to with either the grammatical fundaments of French or modern spoken language.
Camille hits the ball out of the park in both grammatical fundamentals and the subtleties of modern spoken French. This is because her À Moi Paris course combines both the essential fundamentals of French (grammar, verbs, etc.) and the essence of modern spoken French as you’d hear it on the street.
How does Camille do this? Her course is based on a vastly rich series of dialogues. Each dialogue is recorded in three speeds: slow, medium and fast.
As you go through the course, you can chose and toggle between the speeds that work best for you. The fast speed is the normal spoken speed as you’d heard people speaking on the street.
This distinguishing between traditional “textbook” French and real modern spoken French has to with what Camille refers to as “gliding”. This is where some of the written letters are subtly skipped or minimized.
Being aware of these “gliding” occurrences is very important for speaking and understanding modern French. As far as I know, Camille’s course is the only resources which provides such comprehensive explanations of gliding anywhere on the market today.
À Moi Paris – A look “under the hood” of the beginners course (L1 & L2)
Camille’s À Moi Paris comes in eight levels from beginner to intermediate, upper intermediate and advanced. In the course’s early stages, Camille doesn’t burden you with heavy grammar rules. Her emphasis is on letting you hear the way French is actually spoken.
Her strength is that she is able to expertly modify her voice in her recordings so you can hear how the language really sounds. It’s only later in the course where she gradually and comprehensively introduces the essential rules of French grammar.
That said, she does lay the building blocks of French in the L1 (level 1) course. For instance, she does an excellent job explaining the language essentials such as subject pronouns, articles, how to conjugated ER verbs parler (to speak) and aimer (to like), as well as the important irregular verbs avoir (to have) and être (to be).
Screen example shot of an actual lesson
The following is a screenshot of what you’ll actually see when you download the course. In the middle of the screen you will see the dialogue. The controls for modifying the dialogue speeds are on the bottom right.
I’m specifically highlighting this feature because the different speed recordings are not done with a machine. Camille has manually recorded her voice in three different speeds for each dialogue so that you can hear the differences.
Another super useful feature is the ability to hide the English parts of the dialogues. This is accomplished by clicking on a button on the upper-right part of the screen.
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How does the study guide work?
Camille provides a study guide under each dialogue. After listening the dialogues, the study guide is where you’ll spend a lot of time.
On lesson 5, for example, the study guide presents the verb être (to be), provides audio of the conjugation and proceeds to present an exercise and suggestion for drilling.
The final part of the study guide for this lesson provides a comprehensive vocabulary list. Again, Camille does an excellent job providing the audio for all of the vocabulary words.
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Beginner level exercises – supplemental exercises
A Moi Paris offers a complete supplemental study guide for the beginner level. This is a 400+ page guide with 17 hours of audio covering audio-based exercises that are not part of the regular À Moi Paris course. Learn more about supplemental study guide here.
Level 2 – upper beginner
After completing the L1, the second portion of the beginners course, L2 takes a serious leap into some much more serious verb and vocabulary accumulation. Camille expands on areas including number of essential irregular verbs, the concept of “reflexive” verbs and introduces pronouns.
In terms of vocabulary, Camille covers essentials for daily survival in France including food, clothing, shopping, asking directions and much more.
What to expect in the intermediate course (L3 & L4)
Camille’s intermediate level of À Moi Paris (L3 and L4) promises to bring your French to a completely new level. While the ongoing audio story in the dialogues continue, Level 3 takes a big leap into to the building blocks of French grammar.
Each lesson tackles a specific area of grammar. For example, lesson 15 covers the object pronouns y vs. en and lesson 21 covers the relative pronouns qui vs. que.
For levels L3 and up through the advanced levels, Camille continues to record the dialogues at two different speeds: enunciated and modern. Just like the beginner level course, you can toggle between the speeds as you listen to the dialogues.
Level 4 is all about aggressive vocabulary accumulation. In this part of the course, the dialogues become much longer with quite a bit more narration text.
Below each dialogue in Level 4 you’ll find and audio study guide which provides a list of new vocabulary coupled with audio recordings. Below each study guide you’ll find a Q&A section covering that lesson’s dialogue. Again, Camille does these Q&A review sections with audio.
What to expect in the upper intermediate course (L5 & L6)
For the upper intermediate course L5, Camille’s main focus is teaching the most important French verb tenses required for conversational speaking. While the ongoing story in the dialogues continues, Camille introduces and explains a key tense in each lesson.
Specifically, she does a wonderful job explaining the two commonly used French future tenses (futur simple and futur proche) as well as the two commonly used French past tenses (passé composé and imparfait).
Another noteworthy part of the L5 course is Lesson 5 where she covers how the French uses the pronouns on and nous, which can both be used to mean “we”.
The L6 portion is all about more aggressive vocabulary accumulation. The L6 portion of À Moi Paris is structured in a similar way to L4.
Each lesson continues to present a dialogue and is followed by an audio study guide containing a vocabulary list. Each study guide is followed by an audio Q&A section.
What to expect in the advanced course (L7 & L8)
The advanced L7 section of À Moi Paris continues the ongoing story dialogues. This section of the course focuses heavily one of the most difficult areas of the French language: the subjunctive mood.
This part of the course also examines the conditional tense and imperative mood. In section L8, the dialogues continue with more aggressive vocabulary building study guides and audio Q&A reviews.
Download Camille’s app!
À Moi Paris does provide a downloadable app. I downloaded the app on my own phone and had a look. From what I see, you can follow all eight levels of À Moi Paris using the app on your phone exactly as you’d do the course on your computer.
A key advantage to using the app is that you can go through the lessons both on and offline. In addition, the app always remembers where you last left off in the ongoing audio book during your previous study session.
One super advantage to using the app is the Story Mode feature. Here, you can select to only listen to the story dialogues and not hear the additional material (study guides, etc.). This is a great feature for using the À Moi Paris either in the gym or when falling asleep.
One more important feature of the app is Car Mode. This feature offers big buttons to control the app when driving.
Print out the PDFs
You don’t have to be online at all to use À Moi Paris. One great feature is that all of the courses’ PDFs are available for download. In addition, you can download all of the MP3 files and burn them on a CD or copy them on to a USB pen drive.
Very good refund policy
French Today has a great refund policy. If you’re not happy with their course, you can get a full refund within 120 days. Furthermore, their courses never hard recurring or membership fees – you only pay once.
À Moi Paris – Course Review Conclusion
After having taught French myself since 2014 and completed a thorough review of the À Moi Paris audio course Levels 1-8, I conclude that I would definitely recommend it to all of my students.
I feel strongly that Camille’s course would be very beneficial for both self study and as an accompaniment to an online or face-to-face lessons or a high school/university course.
