Customer Reviews

French Made Simple

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

 

 

It is the number of errors in this book that I find so frustrating! It seems obvious that no one took the time to proofread it. I picked up this book to do some french revision and by the time I got up to lesson 8, was ready to throw it in the trash. Accent marks are used only sporadically (sometimes ecrire, sometimes écrire...) They especially seem to have problems with "la rue Whitehall". In the french text, It appears as "la Whitehall street"!

The pluralization errors have been irritating, too. If this is intended to teach a beginning student proper French, I feel it will do nothing but confuse him/her.

I do NOT recommend this book.

I started my effort to learn the language with this book. After much effort and many hours, I almost made it through. I learned much, but this is a painful, tedious way to get there. I recently stumbled upon "Fast French" by Adrienne, which is finally putting it all together for me. I wouldn't recommend anyone rely on "French Made Simple".

It is extremely convenient for the beginners with a working knowledge of english. The situation taken are of the daily life with ample opportunity to grasp the words and setence structures used in day to day communication. Overall a very useful piece of work put together.

However, i wud much appreciate knowing from where i can obtain the sound recordings for this book as soon as possible.

This book has a few mistakes like many books in that field but it's a great book for students to have during the class. And if you teach a French class it's a very convenient book for reading practices and explaining French grammar rules. Vocabulary building and "les exercices" are also well done. I am a French native so it helps a lot for my students for readings and learning grammar rules but I found out that with this book it's very easy and fun to teach French. Of course as a French instructor you will have to add your "savoir faire". It worked fine so far, using this book some of my students (motivated - no previous studies in French - age range: 25/30) became fluent in less than a year, with a good command of the language within 5 months.
When you order that book make sure to order the new revised edition (1990)- ISBN 0385265212 (too bad Amazon does not show the ISBN number when you order a used book).

Even though this book gives decent information about French pronunciation, which is a very useful way to not only learn how to speak the language, but have a grasp on how to say new vocabulary as well, it starts getting confusing once it just randomly jumps into passages, expecting the reader to all of a sudden know how to comprehend the written language without grasping grammar first. Maybe it would have been useful with the aid of an audio CD, but unfortunately it doesnt have it. And another problem with this book is the way it randomly presents new vocab when it has nothing to do with the context of the passages. Possibly a beginner can get through this book, but it would unfortunately be a long and tedious chore that will eventually bore one out of their mind! There are so many great french learning books out there, and this is NOT one of them!

There is an abundance of good material in this book, including
many French language passages. If I could be listening to an
audio tape while reading the words, it would be so much better.
There is not enough pronunciation aid in the book. There could
be twice as much.

I used this book about 15 yrs ago and it made it super easy to learn. If you want to learn French this is an excellent book to use.

Starts out with french on one side of the page and english on the other. Reviews a conversation in different ways and you feel as though you've gained a pretty good understanding before it moves to the next chapter or thing.

This book assumes students of French cannot learn rules of grammar. It is a slow, plodding work that teaches by memorization. It does not start out, for example, with the rules for determining the gender of French nouns. If you do not know the gender of a noun, you cannot figure out the articles, etc., that go with the word. There are occasional "rules" in the lessons, but they are not organized in a coherent fashion. This book is suited to people who have no capacity for learning rules of grammar, and who have oodles of time to kill.

I was very pleased when I received this used book in such good condition. It looked the same as if I had purchased it new from the store. I wish you could speed up the delivery time, then it would be perfect.It took 10 days to get to me.