>>>I agree but last year I listened to Pimlseur Hebrew tapes and when I was in Israel later that year I was able to say things like "where is..", "thank you..", "I don't like to eat, drink..." etc.. The problem was that most israelis speak very good English so they would not let me show off all of my skills <g>. I have heard that french people are much less anglicized (is there such a word? <g>) so maybe when I go to France, I will need all the French I can learn.
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>>My experience in France has been that almost everywhere, as soon as I got out one sentence in my college French, the other person switched to English. In Paris, that was universal. Outside of Paris, I had only a couple of times when that wasn't the case.
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>When I hear americans (native born) speak any foreigh language the accent is usually very strong. I am sure there are exceptions. Because my native language is Russian, I think it gives me an advantage of being able to pronounce words in languages like Spanish, French, and even Hebrew much more "natively". I remember when I got into the taxi at the air port in Tel Aviv and said something in Hebrew to the driver, he immediately started talking back to me in a fast Hebrew. I am sure he assumed that I was one of the Russian imigrants in Israel who just came back from a trip abroad. One other thing I noticed in Israel after going through basic Pimsleur Hebrew caurse. Very often I was able to understand many things people were saying, just by understanding several words in a sentense. It didn't allow me to have a conversation in their language but it was rewarding. And this is what I hope to accomplish when I go to France; to say things that I know how to say in correct French and
> hopefully understand when they tell me to go pound sand <g>.

When we went to Paris I let my wife talking. It was very beneficial both ways: she knows French and she knows what to do in Paris. Think about this.
By the way, I used the same method in London. It worked, i.e. it is generic, language-independent method.