Customer Reviews

Instant French Vocabulary Builder [With CD] (Hippocrene Instant Vocabulary Builder)

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

 

 

I have been looking through spanish and french books for months now at every book store I go to (and online).

I have several critiria that I look for in a language resource now.

In regards to Vocaburlary builders, I look for:
- Words listed in categories (parts of the body, things in the kitchen, colors, numbers, etc)
- Verbs that go with the category listed also (Category: Things in the kitchen, Verbs listed with: to eat, to cook, to be hungry, etc)
- Phonic pronounciations (that make sense to me. ie cat /kat/)
- Use of the vocubulary words in sentences. A story in paragraph form full of cognates would be even better.
- Practice exersices.
- Cognates (words that are similar to the English word (but may be pronounced with the accents of the other launguage)
- Audio accompaniment so you can actually hear how the word sounds.

Of the 7 things listed above, this books does 1 1/2.

1) Cognates gets an A+. This book is just about exclusively a book of cognates and the patterns that they come in, followed by a long list of pure cognates. Cognates are a wonderful way to add huge amounts of vocabulary (4000+ words in this book) to your language with very little work.

2) Audio accompaniment. About 1 in 15 words in this book is spoken on the CD. The spoken words give you a taste of each of the different types of cognate conversions and you have to hope you can take their example and extrapolate it to the rest of the list. I only give this half credit cuz this so easily could be bolstered. How hard is it to have a native speaker read all 15 words instead of 1 when they are listed right in front of speaker. It's a opportunity lost. I would gladly pay extra to hear all the words spoken.

There are no phonic pronunciations written for any words in the book. There are no uses of the words in sentences. There is no grammar. The words are not listed in categories (exect for the cognate type (ie words that end in -tion)) I think words could be categorized even at this point.

This book is a tool that can be used to add great numbers of vocabulary (4000+) to your language and for that I am glad that I have it and recommend it as a gap filler in your language library.

This is a partial replacement to the out of print and outrageously costly Madrigal's Magic Key to French by Margarita Madrigal (which is selling for $183 on Amazon) I have nooooo idea why this book is out of print, when the Spanish version is in every book store I go to. Go figure. Anywho, Madrigal uses the same cognate approach, but adds lots of connecting words that help you build simple sentences that can be used instantly and frequently. Madrigal's book does not have an audio accompaniment and doesn't have phonics spelled out either, but the added sentence building and practice exercises are more valuable than just listing cognates, as Instant French does. If you ever find Madrigal's French in print, send me a copy. Please! : )

Recently my wife and I were planning a two week, once in a lifetime trip though Italy. We were very excited to see the entire country but realized that communicating might be difficult as we got into the Tuscan countryside. With this in mind we picked up a copy of Instant Italian Vocabulary Builder.

Although my wife and I had a bit of Spanish and Italian while in college, we didn't retain nearly enough of the language and its structure to feel comfortable on our trip. We each spent some of our free time reading though this book and were simply amazed at how much we retained. This method of learning worked wonders for the both of us and we commented to each other on our trip that we feel we learned more in the short time spent with this book than in our entire college experience.

This level of comfort with the language helped make our honeymoon a truly unforgettable experience. It allowed us to put our concerns aside and to enjoy our time in the Tuscan wine country. I would highly recommend this book to anyone looking for a fast and easy way to pick up the Italian language. Simply the best learning tool I've used while studying a foreign language.