<< 1 >>
Rating: 
Summary: Variety ! A good MORALE LIFTER for intermediate/advanced.
Review: Here is a collection of about thirty full-page cartoons. Each cartoon has a title: La Vie, L'Amitie, Le Cerveau, etc. The drawings are reminiscent of the French media (Paris Match?). Please examine the cover photo that AMAZON offers: it shows a good sample of these pictures. The book uses a two-page format. The left page has the cartoon; the right page has three "helps" for the student. 1. Understanding the Text: a simple vocabulary list of the words. 2. Key Structures: translates "hard" expressions. Eg.: Ce que tu es bete! You sure can be dumb! 3. A supplemental word/expression list related to the cartoon's theme. These words/expressions are not actually in the text. At the end of the book, there is a helpful glossary and a perfectly usless chart of fifty verbs. CHEERS: Cartoons will add variety to your studies. Some of the drawings are funny: most are not. The vocabulary is a challenge to intermediate/advanced students. "Real life" conversational expressions are often used: (eg. "des tas de" and "flics"). JEERS: The cartoons could be a lot funnier! There is no pronunciation guide. A table of phonetic symbols is presented on page 7, but it's never used elsewhere in the book. Warning: there's nothing to inform students that such constructions as "Tu es" would normally be pronounced "Tay". (It's often written as "T'es", but this book sticks with "Tu es".) BOTTOM LINE: This book is a pretty good value for the money. It offers a chance to read some colloquial expressions normally encountered in the movies rather than in print. Not as much fun as it could be, though.
Rating: 
Summary: The best
Review: I cant say enough about this book. It has helped me so much in building a french vocabulary. However my only advice is, that this is definitely not for a beginner, but for someone who has had years of instructions and is frustrated and wants to learn the spoken words. Teachers might hate this book, but I love it.
<< 1 >>
| 
