Customer Reviews

501 French Verbs: with CD-ROM (Barron's Foreign Language Guides)

5 star:		(24)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(10)

 

 

Other than a good French/English dictionary (I strongly recommend Langenscheidt's Pocket French Dictionary), this is far and away the best investment I have made in my French education. Verbes are one of the most common stumbling blocks for English speaking students of French. This book is user friendly and incredily informative, just make sure you take the time to read over the introduction and familiarize yourself with the various resources it contains.

This is one of the most important books to own if you are learning French. I give the print version 5 stars. The Kindle version, however, is awful and just about useless. Here's why:

The bulk of this book are the listings of the verbs with all of their conjugations. Most of the verbs get a full page with a table of the conjugations and several example usages. Some important verbs get more pages. It is the valuable conjugation tables that cause the problems with the Kindle version.

All of the verb conjugation tables (and many other full pages) are stored in graphic table form, not text. This means that:

1) the print is so small on the Kindle (far smaller than the smallest Kindle font) that the bold print is barely readable if you can read really fine print

2) the blue text on those pages (headings and other important highlights) are rendered such a light gray that they are almost invisible on the Kindle

3) you must zoom in to have any chance of reading the tables. It just zooms in a little bit, so the text is still almost unreadable, especially the blue (as light gray) print. And having to zoom in all the time is a pain.

4) THIS IS THE BIGGEST PROBLEM - You can't search on text in graphic table form. So the bulk of this book is unsearchable. With the print book I can find the verb I want in seconds. I tried everything I could think of for 15 minutes and couldn't find a specific verb page on the Kindle. Search doesn't work, flipping pages is too slow on the Kindle, and there is no way to jump 10 or 100 pages at a time to try to find it.

5) There seem to be gaps or bugs in the file. When flipping pages it sometimes hangs or jumps to the wrong place. This is an especially big problem since there doesn't seem to be any other way to find the verb page you want.

The table of contents doesn't include a listing of the verbs with page links, so I am still left with complete bewilderment about how they though we could ever use this book as a reference when you can't find anything. And if you are lucky enough to jump around for many minutes and find the verb page you want, you still can't read much of the page!

I was hoping to leave the large book home on an upcoming trip to France and just bring my Kindle. No such luck.

Buy the print version of the book. It is great.

Don't waste your money on the Kindle version. It is just about useless!

I bought this version of 501 French Verbs to replace a 25-year-old copy I had used in high school. This new version goes far beyond simply being a dictionary of conjugated French verbs. The authors identify/highlight the 55 essential verbs you need in your vocabulary and inserted additional examples of idioms that use these key words. Exercises in the front section of the book and on the CD help you apply what you learn. I have found this book to be a valuable resource in relearning the French language.

I have been studying French for five years and this book has been within arms length for the last three. It has been the one text (and I have upwards of 20) that I have found truly indispensable. The scope of the verbs used, from the essential "avoir" and "etre" to the more normal "parler," "finir," and "vendre," to headaches like "boire" and "pouvoir."
Aside from the titular 501 French words, there is an appendix with 1001 words, referring the reader to a verb conjugated similarly to ones not included in the original 501.
You want this book.

I had the previous edition of this book and thought it was great. This edition is even better. The most important verbs are in the book and a new feature where key verbs are highlighted makes it even better. Offering a CD provides easier portability as you travel.

This is a good refernce in paperback, but on Kindle you can't search to a specific verb and the small type on the pages is unreadable.

i downloaded the kindle 2 sample of this book. i was skeptical that it would be formatted well. i scrolled through sample expectimg to see what the verb conjugations would look like on the kindle 2. the sample did not include a single page showimg what the conjugations would look like. i will not buy this book at this tim eon kindle. i would guess the conjugation page is just a blurry jpeg. sorry for short choppy sentences. writimg on kindle

I was scared that the cd-rom was not Vista-compatible! It is, though!

The cd has the quizzes of the book; that's greater because I learn better and faster by screen than by book.

A good purchase to be sure! The author even answered my letter [with my question]!

They state "optimized for large screens" but that's code for "We were too lazy to convert the actual conjugation pages so the majority of this book is images and thus completely unreadable on a Kindle." The sample never gets to the the conjugation pages so you wouldn't know this until you've spent the money. Now this book is completely useless to me. Even if you have a monster screen to put it on, images aren't searchable. So get the hard copy if you want this book. Perhaps someday we'll get a zoom feature on images but until then... I'm out $10. I'll chalk it up to cost of doing business in a digital age. Lesson learned.

In this so-called Kindle edition, much of the type face is so light as to be completely unreadable on the Kindle. Do NOT get the Kindle version of this book (which is otherwise a great book). Does anybody who prepares these "Kindle" editions for the publishers ever actually look at them on a real Kindle?

BTW, I have the Kindle DX, so this is not a size issue.