French: A Self-Teaching Guide, 2nd Edition

Rating:
Summary: Great Adjunct
Review: I purchased this book after satisfactorily using the Italian book of the same series in a beginning Italian class. I wanted a book in French without the cutsy pictures and the comic book mentality of some of the more well-known workbooks on the market and focused mainly on the desire of obtaining a no-nonsense review of the French language that I could use as a self-learning tool. I found this book provided a good initial overview that I could use in conjunction with other French learning tools and a native French teacher. It is by no means the only book I would use.

I like this book's format; each chapter begins with a grouping of vocabulary words, verbs and expressions that are used within the chapter in a dialogue and as an introduction to the expression usage and grammar that follows. Exercises follow and yes, they implement structures and words that are not yet covered, but as with any other language book, this does not befuddle the learner into a stupor that disallows him from getting the point of the exercise. Besides, that is what the dictionary is for.

I doubt if this is the only book I would purchase if I were totally ignorant of the language and my pursuit of learning French was realistic. It is one of many books that I own to get certain points across and inside my dull foreign language impaired brain. I like the fact that specific situations like 'a family birthday', 'a trip to the train station', 'shopping in a department store' and 'eating in a restaurant' that are normally the situations one would find oneself in whether in a foreign country or not, are included complete with vocabulary in one concentrated and easy to find area. Rules of grammar are boxed off as are conjugations--sometimes the author shortcuts the conjugations by just showing the endings--I would have found it more helpful to actually see the actual completed conjugation.

I agree that this book is an overview. It can by no means supply the user with every idiomatic phrase used by the modern French speaker. Heavens, entire tomes are written on this subject alone and in all sorts of formats! But, I do think that using this book as a private workbook or in conjunction with a good teacher would more than satisfy even the most cynical language book reviewer. Just last night I scanned the book and penciled in the answers to a number of the exercises merely to make sure I understood grammatical concepts that I learned years ago---the dogged nature of the book's format did help me to remember and the correct answers are included in the review at the end of each five chapter grouping.

I would categorize this book as a good functional refresher to those who have studied French before, want a concise overview or use it in a classroom situation with a good teacher. There is no pronunciation guide (no individual phonetic spelling of each vocabulary word or phrase) and no accompanying CD to help you get at least a semblance of a French accent. In addition to this book, I would recommend the CLE series used by the Alliance Francaise--workbook and text as well or checking out your local college to see what beginning text book series is utilized there---the Glencoe texts used in highschool are very good, but are. of course, geared towards adolescents. The Gimmick series is interesting, but the format lacks quick look-up capabilities. If your interest includes street-smart French, there are more than a few books that cover this rather colorful topic with panache.

Rating:
Summary: A good self-teaching guide
Review: If you want to learn french and use this book as your only resource, expect to spend several hours working on different sentences and excercises throughout the book. However, all the effort is worthwhile, as the authors use daily speeches and conversations to take you from learning the basics of French, starting a conversation, to learning to speak French confidently and starting your own conversations in French also.

Rating:
Summary: limited usefulness
Review: This book doesn't cover a lot of territory and is rather simplistic. It would be best for someone who already knows a little French but not very much. Someone who doesn't know any French will have problems because (1) the book contains typos and mistakes (for instance, the words for 'big' and 'narrow' are switched in one of the vocabularies, the accents are sometimes wrong) (2) it often gets ahead of itself and uses words and grammatical features that haven't yet been explained (3) many points it fails to explain at all and (4) its grammatical explanations tend to be incoherent, unsystematic and not very thorough. Also (5) it really doesn't explain much about pronunciation. So you should know some French, but not too much, because someone who already knows a fair amount of French will not find much of interest here. This would be best for someone with some limited French who is trying to brush up. The book has useful practical vocabularies (about the restaurant, the airplane etc) and reasonable dialogues. However, I would advise the reader to take what the book says with a grain of salt and not consider it an accurate reference.