Customer Reviews

Practice Makes Perfect: Advanced French Grammar: All You Need to Know For Better Communication (Practice Makes Perfect Series)

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

 

 

Advanced French Grammar dives into the the most difficult aspects of French grammar. I think the chapter on the subjunctive and the distinction between "c'est" and "il est" are worth the price of the book.

Here is a list of the chapters in Advanced French Grammar

1. Understanding the verb
2. Compound tenses and agreement of the past participle
3. Use of the past tenses
4. Translating the -ing form into French
5. Relative tenses introduced by que
6. The subjunctive
7. Relative tenses not introduced by que
8. Articles
9. Other determiners
10. Relative pronouns
11. Neutral relative pronouns: translating a different kind of what
12. Determining a noun with prepositions
13. Object pronouns
14. Position of object pronouns
15. Expressing this is and that is: ce, ça, and il
16. Questions
17. Translating for, since, and a few other expressions of time
18. Negative sentences

I've already mentioned that my favorite parts of the book were the sections on the subjunctive and c'est/il est. I especially liked how the author gave a list of "trigger expressions" for the subjunctive. She also gave a list of expressions that do not trigger the subjunctive.

I liked the chapter on the past tenses, but I didn't love it. It seems to explain the imparfait the exact same way several other books and teachers explain it; they say it describes the scenery. And I really don't like this explanation because it's so unclear to me. When I tutor students on the difference between the imparfait and the passé composé, I use the acronyms HIDE and STARS.

Imparfait - HIDE

Habitual Actions (used to + VERB)
Incomplete Actions (was/were + ing form of verb)
Descriptions in the past
Emotions/Feelings (most of the time)

Passé Composé - STARS

Sudden Ocurrence
Time Limit/Complete Action
Action Disrupts Action of Imparfait Verb
Reaction/Result
Series of Distince Instances or Events

The other chapters explain prepositions, pronouns, making questions, negating, etc. I highly recommend this book to any intermediate or advanced French learner.

Brandon Simpson

After getting stuck at an advanced intermediate level of French, this book is exactly what I need. I've even spent a lot of time with native professional tutors who couldn't begin to explain subtleties like which preposition to use with each verb or the mysteries of pronouns (ce qui, tout ce qui, ce, cela - does anyone really know which one to use?) because it's just too instinctive for them. And there are enough examples that I can read and reread them until the rules really sink in.

The author has taken a number of trouble spots in French usage and organized chapters around each one.

I found all of the material helpful, and only have a few nits to pick.

First, I would have liked to see a few more examples, especially in some of the trickier areas. The author sometimes crams a lot of different possible combinations in the textual material, and then shows only two or three of them in examples. She assumes -- not necessarily correctly -- that the reader will be able to extrapolate in a number of different ways from the examples. I did not always find this to be the case. On the other hand, the examples that do appear are helpful and relevant.

Second, the author has an annoying habit of referring to the examples by number, even though they are not numbered, and in some cases it's simply not possible to figure out which example she is referring to because there seems to be a discrepancy between the way she is counting and the way the examples appear. It would help to number the examples and remove all chance of ambiguity.

For the above reasons, I would probably give the book 4-1/2 stars instead of five.

On the whole, however, the book contains much valuable material for the intermediate to advanced French learner.

This book has an extensive review of French grammar. I realized how much I'd forgotten while going through the chapters. However, this book is for people who have already studied French and need a good review. This book would be difficult to navigate for beginners. Overall, this is a great book for those who want to improve your French grammar.

I purchased Advance French Grammar to help learn more concepts as well as review what I already know. The explanations are excellent. However, I gave this four stars because I wish it had more practices at the end. (On average, there are only three exercises.)

Therefore, I strongly recommend this to those that are looking for a concise review of topics such as relative tenses, the subjunctive, pronouns, and more. If you are seeking to practice and learn, I'd suggest looking into The Ultimate French Verb Review and Practice as well as Basic French Grammar, both which offer many more exercises.

This book had a simple format for each chapter: information, examples, and exercises. It could have been a good format, but this author would sometimes go back and forth between info and examples for ten or fifteen pages before allowing the student to practice anything at all. At the end of some chapters before the exercises, there would be what the author called a 'recap' which was basically another two pages of the entire chapter's digest.
The chapter on relative pronouns was very frustrating and a good example of why this book is so bad: rather than inform me on the word 'lequel', provide a couple of examples, and allow me to perform a couple of exercises, it introduced me to 'lequel', 'dont', 'qui', 'que', all of the their forms, all of their exceptions, all of their compound prepositions, which ones are supposed to be used for an object versus a subject, etc. etc. etc, and then gave four pages of exercises. It was like telling someone in great detail how to swim before immediately dropping them into the middle of the Pacific Ocean. "California's that way! Don't worry! You'll be fine!"
Let me further critique this book by saying that in some of the exercises involving translating, certain skills would be needed that the author hadn't yet taught. In hindsight, while studying the book, I would often come across a piece of information such as neutral relative pronouns and think about how useful they would have been if I had known that they existed a few chapters prior. Not to mention, most of the information was too wordy to begin with.
There are two kinds of professors in this world: those who teach, and those who test. Veronique Mazet fits into the latter category. For that, I give her a D+.

I found this to be an excellent review of the finer points of French grammar. There was much I did not know, and what I did already know was presented in a an easy to read fashion for review. I showed it to my French tutor and he was enthusiastic also. Plus it's not very expensive.