Customer Reviews

French Vocabulary Cards: Academic Study Card Set

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On the whole, I have found this vocabulary card set to be useful. In addition to the 1000 French words, most cards contains 1 - 4 additional related words, idioms, and expressions. I have found the idioms and expressions immensely useful, since these are critical to speaking and difficult to find in useful summaries. All told, there are probably 2000 French entries on the 1000 cards.

Since I already knew French, I went through the whole deck to find words I didn't know or didn't know well. Since then, I have been reviewing and organizing the cards into piles of words I don't know at all, almost know, know but need to review, and know fully. This has made increasing my vocabulary fairly painless and mindless.

I have two complaints.

The first, which I find disturbing, is that the card set contains numerous French spelling/grammar errors. I have found 5 spelling/grammar errors so far, plus one grammar error that is repeated on 40 cards. These cards were clearly neither created by nor proofed by a native French speaker. But a few errors out of 2000 entries does not make them unusuable, and it gives you something to look out for. If the cards have been out for 10 years, why hasn't the publisher fixed the errors?

The second complaint is that around 5% of the idioms and expressions on the cards are obsolete. I am in France working with a native french instructor, and have been going through the cards to remove from my speaking vocabulary expressions that haven't been used in the spoken language for 20 - 40 years. This is another sign that the cards were created by an english speaker that studied french at a university, and not by a native french speaker.

Curiously, all of the accents (aigu, grave, circumflex) are written in by hand over typeset words. The publishers couldn't find a word processor that could make letters with accents? This is yet another sign that these cards were made by people without any contact with France or Canada.

SparkNotes also makes a 1000 word french vocabulary card set, but I have not looked at it.

Just some quick additional notes, based on others' comments. These look like the same cards that my father (a college prof) used back in the 1960s. This would account for the fact that some idioms are dated, and that the accents are hand-written, since they had no word processors back then. The hot-lead Linotype machines would not have had the necessary accents. The current publisher probably reprinted from existing plates, or used camera composition to make quick photo-offset printing plates. I'm not trying to justify it or anything...

Further, any thicker card stock and you would have an even bigger & heavier box. Ugh.

As for using a dictionary, forget about it: your eye will "peek" at the English translation.

All in all, still a good method for rigorous but occasional drill. Daddy loved 'em, and had the Spanish ones too. Note: Check out a French Verb Wheel (by Cuthbertson) if you would like another handy gizmo.

In order to prevent wear and tear on the cards, I laminated 10 a day, as I was building my vocabulary. Many of those cards are now taped on different objects in my home to help my children associate the the object with the correlating French word.

Love the cards!

I was very excited about receiving this cards as I have just started formally learning French. I figured I could use these cards as a companion to my classroom learning and that they would be practical as the words are supposed the 1000 most common words. However, when I recieved them I was disappointed. There are two major problems with these cards. First, they are very small. The cards measure around 1.5 inches high and 4 inches wide. This makes them very awkward to handle I believe. Also, the paper stock is a bit light for cards that presumably will be seeing lots of use as you flip through them.

Second, and more important is that the cards are numbered(1-1000) in alphabetical order in French. I cannot understand why Vis-Ed chose to do this. This doesn't give me a logical manner in which to study. I could have just as easy bought a pocket French dictionary to memorize. I much better way to number the words would have been in order of frequency of occurence. This way, you'd learn the more common words first.

For both of these reasons, these cards will most likely sit on my bookshelf gathering dust. I do not recommend these cards; although it's a great idea, the execution is poor.