try livemocha.com they have crash courses in many languages.

I took a couple courses in French and cannot speak it. I read LeMonde.Fr well enough to get the gist of the articles to see what's going on, but I turn to babelfish to translate articles that peak my interest. Since the babelfish I use translates recognized words in their placement, I'd recommend following up your crash-course with reading some .fr websites that discuss topics such as anime to see grammar/sentence structure in English since it'll be easier to notice in the familiar language.