51 of 54 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A well-organized, comprehensive, large-print reference work, October 15, 1998
Indexed in both French and English, this reference work is for all levels of students, including self-learners, who either need to or wish to review constantly the essential French grammar structures, with examples, details, exceptions, and many tables, which organize and present each grammatical element. It uses a comparative approach so that the English speaker can relate quickly to the nuances of the french grammar being presented. It is the only textbook being used in the French to English translation class at Sacramento State University, Sacramento.
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30 of 31 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Best place to find explanations, but once found..., March 18, 2002
By A Customer
This is easily the best organized grammar reference among the five I have collected over the years. I guess I keep purchasing grammar books in the hope that one will actually make sense of the subject. In sum, I find I have two other French grammar books in English (Berlitz French Grammar and "The Ultimate French Review & Practice") plus two more texts in French.
The French grammars (Sorbonne, McGraw Hill) are fine, but not if you are in a hurry for an answer.
This book, French Reference Grammar, is thick and comprehensive, with a superb index. It also makes good use of tabular presentations.
If you have a specific problem in mind, you can find the answer fastest in the book. But once you locate the explanation you may find it pretty hard to understand. The text is so utterly codified, such an exercise in verbal algebra, that it is often difficult to follow.
I sometimes wonder why these books do not diagram sentences. Grammar is a machine. Verbal descriptions of machines are often gibberish. A picture might work better.
The most helpful French grammar book in English, in my experience, is "The Ultimate..." perhaps because it does such a good job of integrating examples from everyday speech with formal grammatical rules. But it wouldn't hurt to pick up both of these books.
Berlitz's French Grammar is more compact and very good, full of short cuts and keyword hints, but it uses a few terms peculiar to the Berlitz teaching method, and the organization is not at all clear.
This reference sets an example for logical organization.
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22 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
At last - a good reference guide for grammar, March 18, 2005
This review is from: French Grammar: A Complete Reference Guide (Paperback)
This is an excellent guide to French grammar organized very much like a style guide. For example, conjunctions with the indicative are covered under point 179. Point 180 covers french usages of the English equivalent "after" (e.g., apres and apres que), point 181 covers French usages of the English equivalent "as" (e.g., que, comme, aussi) and so on. The structure makes reference a breeze, as opposed to flipping through grammar texts for each grammar point.
The book assumes that you already have a fair understanding of grammar and structure and only need clarification and/or fine tuning - this is not a text book for beginning French. Each entry has a brief but reasonably thorough explanation and several examples. There is an extensive index, a section of problem words/phrases, several exercises and an answer key.
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