Customer Reviews

Ntc's Beginner's French and English Dictionary (Language - French)

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

 

 

I bought this book for french 3 and I wasn't able to use it on my first days homework of review from french 2. It's nice for some one in french 1 or starting french 2, but they have a select choice of words to choice from. Don't get me wrong it's a very nice, easy, to understand dictionary, I would love it if I could have found just a more complete version. Borders didn't have much of a selection, and it caught my eye with how easy it was to understand, with example sentances in english and french. But once I got home and tried to use it for my homework, I realized quickly how it wasn't going to help me on my first day's review work, I was diffently going to have more problems as I got into the class.

I dont know much about books and borders, but I'm really hoping you can return books like you return clothes or at least make an exchange.

This book is just great! Every verb is shown conjugated. Every entry has a sample sentence. I am using it to increase vocabulary and am just thrilled.

This dictionary came bundled with the French textbook I used for my first three semesters of instruction, and I needed a new dictionary within my first semester. Although I was very new to French, I had at best a 50% chance of finding what I wanted to say in this dictionary. Often, the abbreviated glossary at the back of my textbook was more helpful.

This dictionary is nowhere near pocket-size, and doesn't claim to be. What you might not realize, though, until you get it home and try to use it, is that this book could easily be condensed into a pocket-sized format without any loss of content at all. The type is so large and the spacing so wide that, far from merely being easy to see, it actually looks a bit like a children's dictionary. Trying to use this book and seeing the layout and watered-down content, I had to wonder if the author realized that the reader is only new to French, not to reading altogether.

Every pocket-sized language dictionary I've used, not to mention standard dictionaries, contained more entries and often better explanations. If you are studying French, it doesn't take long for even irregular verb conjugations to become second nature, and in the meantime most textbooks include conjugations of common and irregular verbs in their own appendices. It's more important for a dictionary to indicate a word's function in a sentence, or whether it's always used the same way depending on context, and this dictionary often did not do that. Instead, it guesses what you want to do with the word you're looking up, gives you that in a sentence, and offers no other explanation.

Although it seems counterintuitive, a more advanced dictionary, paired with a real French text, would probably be friendlier for beginning French students-- and neither would become obsolete as quickly as this dictionary.

The book is excellent for those persons that learn french for first time. It's easy and clear for understand.

This dictionary contains only the most basic French words. I was in French 1 and I still can't find a lot of French words that I learnt.