Customer Reviews

Practice Makes Perfect: Complete French Grammar (Practice Makes Perfect Series)

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

If you're studying French grammar, it's usually because you have to ( student) or you enjoy French and want to improve your writing. I find this book exceptional because it provides the basics but won't bore the advanced student or teacher. This is a clear, concise, guide to basic grammar without the excessive prattle that fills pages and inflates the price of textbooks while boring students to distraction.
It had been years since I studied French. When I picked up this smartly organized volume, I not only quickly began to recall what I thought I'd forgotten, but I also learned new concepts for thinking about grammar. Painless and highly recommended!

As a language teacher, I think this is the best grammar guide I've found for my students and for anyone seeking to improve their French skills. The explanations are clear, the exercises useful, and the tables and verb charts are an easy to use and invaluable aid to anyone trying to write in French.

I found this book well-organized and easy to proceed through. I have a lot of experience with French (studied in high school and college), but needed a review, so for me it was perfect. I really can't say how it would be for someone just starting out; I think most folks would want to be able to hear the words. But there are some great websites for that, so perhaps in conjunction with the web, this would be a good starter French grammar book.

I bought this initially based on the high reviews and a quick glance through the book. I wish I'd passed on it, though. It's not horrible, but it's not for the complete beginner -- maybe not even for the intermediate beginner. The exercises are straightforward if a bit tedious. There are lists of words but no context -- no narratives or vignettes -- which I think makes it harder to remember the words. It's easier to recall the meaning of a word when you think of it in the context in which you saw or used it, such as in a brief passage or story. Or at least it is for me. The other problem with the exercises is that there's a lot of unglossed vocabulary thrown in, not just the words you've encountered already. There's a dictionary in the back, but not all the words used are in it. There's also some ambiguity when they ask you to write an English sentence in French, and (so you think) there are several ways of wording it, but only once answer is given in the key in the back of the book. Overall I guess it's okay if you're a bit further along, but I would go with something more narrative and less by rote if you're just starting out.

I like this workbook, but it is clearly not for beginners. I use it as a supplement with a reader for my French II class. I think its application is best for highschoolers who have a good base from French I with some reading experience, but the book does assume that the student either already can translate or is being taught every word in a standard classroom setting. It would frustrate a beginner, as it is not self-explanatory. And unless a parent is gifted, fluent or can spend a lot of time with their student, going through it on your would be tedious. It is thorough in teaching verb tenses & sentence structure. Vocab. is included in the sections. I like the sentence translation exercises, but again this is definitely an intermediate program. Excellent investment.

This review refers to the Kindle edition. Unfortunately, Amazon and/or the publisher provide no quality control. The exercises and many of the examples are in a tiny unreadable font. The size of these cannot be increased using the Aa menu. Obviously, they were imported as graphic objects rather than as text. This leaves the Kindle edition of the book useless. The lesson: never buy a Kindle book without trying a sample first.

I am happy I got this book. It's filled with practicable exercises covering every important aspect of the French grammar. This book is a must have for everyone who wants to improve and supplement the skills without the fuss of many French book. I recommnand it to anyone who wants to have a complete, concise & clear learning experience.

Learning a language is always difficult; of the various grammer books I find this to be exceptional as it covers the essentials, gets more advanced without being so complete as to be worthless - see Schaum's French Grammar which is so complete that it is useful for a very advanced student and not a beginner or intermediate student.

This book may be all that users who love it claim, but on my Kindle I can't see it. Literally. All the charts and exercises in the book are written in fonts so small as to be illegible, and these charts do not respond to attempts to enlarge the font. While the text changes, the charts do not--which makes the Kindle version worthless and a rip-off. Does anyone actually review the Kindle versions of books for their viewability on the Kindle? If I bought a book in which half the text was illegible, I would return it. When I buy it on Kindle, it seems I'm stuck.

This book really gives a fantastic work-through of grammatical concepts, and presents the material in a fairly logical order. This book is written especially for students that want a systemic method of learning the language, but even for a student like me that likes to randomly do bits and pieces of learning here and there, this book is still great because it presents the material logically (though it's a bit of a shame that there isn't a table of contents or index included so that the student can look up a concept on demand) and has a myriad of exercises. All in all, this is a very classroom-like book that will provide a logical order for students that wish to seek it, and will also give great examples for every student of French.

Warning: The vocabulary in the book is not translated, nor is much vocabulary given in the lessons. There is a bi-lingual glossary in the back which gives a few words and phrases. This is a grammar manual, so it is best accompanied by a dictionary.