Customer Reviews

Vie Outre-Manche

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People learning French are lucky because there are a number of magazines with audio available. This particular magazine is intended for native English speakers learning French. It has a wide variety of articles covering topics like current events, history, book reviews, crossword puzzles (very challenging!) with the last pages of the roughly 35-40 page magazine being devoted to exercises for learning French, This language learning section includes grammar, vocabulary building, and even sometimes translation exercises. The articles in this magazine are quite challenging though difficult vocabulary items (sometimes whole phrases) are defined in side boxes. Don't underestimate how nice this feature is---rather than a dictionary that just defines the word as it may be used, this actually defines the word as it is meant to be understood in this particular context. Little space is wasted in this magazine; there is not an overabundance of photos. The audio CD, should you chose to receive it as well, is of good quality and contains about an hour of material. The website for this magazine has several article samples and they are very representative of the product. My favorite part of this magazine is the book reviews because I have been introduced to many books I would not otherwise have known about. I suppose one could argue that once you are able to read native materials, what is the use of a magazine such as this? Well for one the audio material is good---fully transcribed audio material is very useful for ear training. I also enjoy the variety of different articles in one source along with the grammar and vocabular section. Plus finding the time to read a few articles in French can seem much less daunting than a whole novel. Overall this is a nice product for improving French.