Customer Reviews

English Grammar for Students of French: The Study Guide for Those Learning French

5 star:		(24)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I am surprised that others have not found this book useful. As an English major in college (someone you would expect to have a greater-than-average grasp on grammar) I found myself lacking in a number of grammer concepts.
When you study French, you are confronted with concepts like "definite,indefinite and partitive articles". Now, in English, you will often use the article which "sounds right". This is actually when you compare your mental database of conversations,schooling, etc to the 2 or 3 options listed, and make an educated guess. Often, you can guess the right answer without actually understanding why it is the right answer, or understanding the concept behind the article.
This book is great for understanding this type of problem. The book explains what an article is (the, a , an) and how they are used in English. Then the book gives you the complementary article in French (de, de l',du) and how it is used in French.
This greatly helped my understand my native English, and how to translate my ideas into French.
The book also covers tense. Even in English, tense is not just past,present and future;tense is also ideas like "am going to go" "I was going to go" and "I am going right now".
The book covers the idea of possessive adjectives (my,yours,his), possessive pronouns (mine,yours, his) which look almost identical in English, and demonstrative pronouns like "this one" and "those/these".
However, this book is an easy read. It is not in "grammer-ese". It is well broken up, so that chapters are only 2-6 pages - enough that you can do one concept at a time.Concepts are explained very simply and examples are given that make it easy to understand.
This book is well worth buying.

I have taught French at a university for 32 years, and have recommended this book to my students through all its editions. Many of today's college students were never taught anything at all about grammar in high school, making it difficult to grasp concepts like "the adjective agrees with the noun." This will take the mystery out of grammatical terminology. Parallel examples in English and in French make explanations clear. This latest edition has added exercises. I believe that it's well worth the money. Foreign language learning is much easier when the general concepts can be grasped and clearly understood. This book will help you do that.

that this book has a website (oliviahill.com) where they list 16 different popular textbooks for learning french. Click on yours (mine is French in Action) and you are treated to a chapter and grammar topic breakdown of your textbook. For each grammar topic, they list the relevant reading you should do in this book before starting with your textbook lesson. You will be prepared ahead of time, and already comfortable with the concepts as they relate to the english language. This seems to me to be a pretty big bonus. You can refer to the other reviews as to how good the book is or isn't, because I just started with the course and the book. But it does seems simple, concise, and user-friendly. Don't panic when you see whole "chapters" being listed to read for one concept--the chapters are usually two simple pages that take just a few minutes to read. I was kind of a snob about where I thought I stood on grammar, and got this book "just in case." But I already see that there is a lot of detail I either forgot or never knew. As to how clear French in Action would have made things without this book, I don't yet know, but I'm glad I didn't try to skim by with a rough understanding.

What a find! This book is well written, and has grammer rules laid out in a logical format. Unlike many other grammer books this text uses French-language examples alongside English phrases to demonstrate proper usage. A quiz is included at the end of each chapter. I use this text for reference in teaching 4th year AP French high school students, and recommend it highly to any student of French.

I am the author of this book and could not find a way to communicate with your site to tell you that you have an outdated edition of the book on your site. The book is in the Fifth edition and you are selling the Fourth. You do have a way for publishers or authors to communicate with you?

Thank you.

I cannot emphasize enough just how necessary and crucially important this book is to own for college students of French, from 1st year/2nd semester, up to more advanced levels. This book is readable, concise, and easy to understand for English-speaking students studying French. Simply by juxtaposing French and English sentences, it teaches you French grammar from the viewpoint of English grammar, which makes it awfully ease to comprehend. It covers every single basic grammatical form, from the past tense (passe compose) to the future perfect tense (le futur anterieur). You cannot possibly go wrong with this book. The only thing you really need with this book is a good, solid memory. However, if your ambition is to engulf the full command of French grammar, such as those who intend to be French writers' someday, then buy Advanced French Grammar (c1999) along with this book. I own both, and they have both served as "end-all" bombs in conquering the difficulties in learning to read and write French. Take my advice, buy this book!

This is exactly what I needed!!! I need to learn French very quickly and I started learning a couple of months ago and wish I had this book then. It adequately explains clearly all those questions you want answered with excellent examples in English and in French. If you are like me a have forgotten how the English language is structured and what the tenses mean and what an the different types of verbs and nouns are, then this book will be a GOD SEND to you. I have only just started and cannot put it down! The only criticism I have is that I would benefit from a few more exercises, maybe an accompanying exercise book will do, and the pronunciation alongside the French word would be helpful. The publishers are open for opinions and so far this is what I will recommend. It still warrants 5 stars. If you want to learn French quickly and are completely out of practice and need French language structure explaining, then this is the book for you.

I recommend this book to anyone looking for a basic grammar book that cross references english grammar and french grammar. Simple format and easy to access information.

I purchased this book as one of the required texts for a class I took at my college. This book is very helpful because not only does it increase your understanding of French grammar, it reminds you of the ins and outs of English grammar that you may not have seen or studied in years. The book is nicely divided into chapters that clearly explain important grammar basics. Another essential text for the serious student, and also for thse who want to brush up.

I really love this book because I do not understand english grammar as well as I would like to. When it comes to learning a different language, it is almost impossible to understand the grammar unless you know the grammar of your own language. I speak french as a second language and I found this book really helpful. I even had someone who speaks spanish borrow this book of the french language and it helped her despite that spanish and french are not entirely the same language despite that they derive from Latin. She ended up getting the Spanish version herself. For a quick refernce I definitely would recommend this book for someone if they were in a pinch.