Graded French Reader: Premiere Etape

Rating:
Summary: Excellent French reader; accompanies methods nicely.
Review: Graded readers are great, and this is one of the best. This one greets the new language learner in a non-threatening way, as a reader should. It seems simple enough in the beginning, but builds vocabulary and structure steadily, so that the learner is able to make progress without having to take steps that are too long. (Some books require that the learner take gigantic leaps which are just unreasonable.) While this French reader is simple enough, I must issue one word of caution: graded foreign-language readers are not meant to be a course by themselves, and so should be used in conjunction with a good method. The language learner should begin early practicing reading aloud. Today, there are many opportunities to work on pronunciation. The student may listen to the target language on tape, on radio or television, or even on the internet. If this graded reader is used along with other tools, it will be very, very useful...and fun at the same time.