Customer Reviews

Vis-a-vis: Beginning French Student Edition Prepack

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

 

 

This is the most poorly organized textbook I have ever read. Each chapter is divided into sections that jump around from instruction to practice questions to fake conversations between the poorly developed characters that follow you through the entire book. The instruction, for which one purchases a textbook, is lacking. Many chapters and sections begin merely with practice exercises following a passage about the characters; there is no instruction or explaination about the topic at all! Almost every chapter appears to cover some aspect of French grammar, but this is misleading: most topics are merely covered by asking practice questions. Worst of all, the practice questions that constitute the instruction have no answers available to students!

The structure of this book is clearly designed as an inspiration to French Instructors who lack creativity and diversity in their lectures. The garbage inserted to break the monotony is designed to add culture and flavor to the text. It fails to do so, however, and instead results in an incoherent text that provides no definitive treatment of many essential aspects of learning a forein language.

This was my college text book a couple years back. I was never the best at actually MAKING it into class all the time, but this book was straight forward enough that I was always able to catch up, or even keep up on my own.

Whether you want to get this book to give it a go on your own, or if it's required for a class, you won't go wrong.

This book combined with its corresponding work book and CD are very useful for a novice to learn french

This is the text book I need for a class at a community college. It is not bad. It works. Contents are quite interesting too.