Bottom-line:  This is a decent quiz app (with a few games built in) for older students (middle/high school+) and adults who are learning core-French (not immersion) style.  To make the best use of this app, student should be able to read in French at least at a basic level.

I’m always looking for great apps for my kids to use as a supplement, so I was really happy when the developer of French Class (available on ios and Android) agreed to let me review their app.  Unfortunately, it wasn’t a great fit for my children.  The explanations for everything are in English and because they are already reasonably fluent, French explanations would have benefited them more.  Of course, for many students, having English explanations would be a plus. 🙂

This app is also mostly quiz style, which works fine for older students, but the young set will lose interest quickly.  My oldest is 11 and the style would have worked just fine for her if the content was a better fit.  My youngest, at age 9, would have been bored with this app regardless of the content.  So, if you have younger kids, probably skip this one.  If you’re looking for something for yourself or for your older students, keep reading.

Here’s what the app includes (info right from iTunes):

French Class offers a complete offline French course, together with interactive verb, vocabulary, grammar and listening exercises. All words and phrases are available to listen to as well.
Great support when you learn French. Easy to practice your verb conjugations, vocabulary, grammar and phrases with.

This full course contains 10 French language lessons covering the following content:
* All verb tenses, with conjugations of more than 100 verbs, and irregular forms indicated
* An extended vocabulary with 4000+ words, sorted into categories such as business, transport and vacation
* 40 grammar topics, covering all French grammar
* 200 useful phrases

And the following features:
* Highly customizable exercises on all of the above, with a fun awards system that is integrated with Game Center which makes practicing fun, with separate awards for the vocab, verbs, grammar and listening exercises.
* Keeping track of your progress by saving statistics and summaries of all completed exercises, while keeping track of errors made.

What I liked about this app:

• There really is a lot of content.  It includes exercises on vocabulary, grammar, verbs, and listening exercises.
• It’s a good deal.  Most French apps are expensive.  This one is reasonable. ($3.99 on ios and $4.46 on Google Play.)  There is also a lite version on ios and a demo version on Google Play so you can try it out free.
• It can be used offline – good for long car rides even without a data plan on your device
• Option to select “prefer Canadian French” in the settings if that’s your bent
• The speed of the audio is adjustable (also in the settings) – so in the listening exercises, you can slow it down or speed it up to the student’s level
• It’s not all question-style – you can also do crosswords and word searches to break things up a bit

Suggested improvements for future releases:

• There is only audio for the listening exercises.  It would have been really useful for students to be able to hear the pronunciation of the phrases in the other exercises so they would be getting both the visual and audio cues at the same time.  There is a reference section of the app that has audio buttons for the words listed, but it’s an alphabetical list.  It would be much more useful to hear the words while you’re working with them.

Recommendation:

If your student is mature enough to handle a mostly quiz-style app, and they are at the beginner or intermediate level, this may be a good fit for your family.  Check it out:

Thank you to the developer for providing this app to me for review purposes at no charge. All opinions are my own.

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