Teaching Tools:  

There are many ways of learning with Instant Immersion. The program uses image-word association along with audio from native speakers to help you learn words. But much of the teaching also uses traditional textbook-type entries. The culture lessons are useful, and the included mystery game is great for practicing listening comprehension. One of the most glaring omissions is the lack of online testing and online chat with native speakers that makes it easy to reinforce what you have learned.

The speech recognition system in Instant Immersion is a definite strength, though. With it you can test your pronunciation and get feedback on how to make more accurate sounds. You can also use the speech recognition function to engage in conversations in certain sections of the lessons.

Each disc also comes with a quiz so you can test your French before moving on to the next level.

Word Tools:  

We were actually pretty discouraged with the lack of word tools Instant Immersion offers. They do have a reference tab in the program, but the information isn’t very helpful.

Tech Support/Help:  

TOPICS Entertainment, the parent company of Instant Immersion, has poor customer and technical support resources. There is no FAQ section, and their only references are disjointed documents which we found don’t address most questions. There is a section where you can log questions and receive a list of support documents, but it is hunkered at the bottom of the technical support page.

Instant Immersion has some great features and covers the basics of French pretty well. We especially liked the price, and although this program doesn’t have all the bells and whistles our top rated products do, it gets the job done. However, we did not like the lack of technical support, and would have liked to see more word tools and online resources such as tests and live chat with native speakers.

Overall, Instant Immersion is a competent product that will certainly help you learn French, and it's definitely a decent alternative to some of the higher priced solutions.