Customer Reviews

Voila!: An Introduction to French (with Audio CD)

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

As an old time French major, I'd have killed for a book like this when I was in college! I bought it just as a refresher and it is everything I could have hoped for. The information is pretty current; the authors take pains to teach you several "registers" of French - i.e. colloquial, slang, etc., because the student at least needs to understand these. I'd love to get my hands on anything else these authors have written.

I agree with what another reviewer said about this book being incoherent. The layout is absolutely horrible- they introduce terms and ideas out of nowhere with no explanation as to what they mean, and you end up struggling through the chapter, digging through Google, french dictionaries, and Youtube in an attempt to make sense of any of it, only to realize that most of the magical mystery words were explained totally illogically AFTER the end of the chapter- and explained poorly, I might add. It would be like an English book that asks questions about Ernest Hemingway 30 pages BEFORE explaining who he was and why he was significant.

The package I received (NOT from Amazon, bought it from the college) came with the text, a workbook with two major sections that both "sort of" follow the text chapters, a set of 3 audio CDs, and different set of 13 audio CDs. However, the podcasts mentioned in the book cannot be found anywhere at the indicated URL. Irritatingly, there is no explanation as to how any of these resources are supposed to function as a full learning system. It's just "here you go, have fun sifting through this random swiss-cheese collection of french stuff".

Voila! Might be okay if you're not a first year student and already have some kind of grasp on these concepts, but for a beginner, it's an absolute nightmare. The book is definitely not for anyone attempting to teach themselves French- I can barely make sense of it even with the guidance of a teacher.

I'd like to point out that I do quite well in all of my subjects and have never had this much of a problem with a book before. I have honestly learned more French from Youtube and LiveMocha than I have from this book. The only reason I would buy this, knowing what I know now, would be if it were absolutely required for a course.

I gave this textbook two stars only because of the inclusion of the audio companion CDs, which aid in pronunciation.

This book is very helpful,as a student who had not studied french for 2 years it not only broke down things that you need to know( verbs, indefinaye articles,etc.) It alsohelped with articles in french and a tremendous vocab section.

If you need Voila 6th Edition for your class textbook, you can get away with the 5th Edition. I used it for both semesters of French at UM, and it was very similar layout and had all of the same keywords and vocabulary. For the online workbook (which is included with the 6th Edition), just order it online instead. Since 5th edition is so inexpensive, you end up saving overall instead of buying the bundled 6th Edition book and online workbook combined.
I highly recommend 5th Edition over 6th for price.

I am teaching with this book this semester and one of my students said "it's the most incoherent book i've ever seen" and I don't blame him. the information is scattered everywhere, way too few exercises, but a lot of useless and unrealistic stuff...
the students really have a hard time with it, and don't feel like opening it. which is a big problem.
and it's also too costly for students. not worth it.

A very solid introduction to french; grammar and vocabulary usage are usually explained pretty clearly. There's not much more you could ask for. Autodidacts N.B. that the textbook itself contains very little guidance on pronunciation so you should either buy the workbook and cds as well, or find that information elsewhere.

I bought this book for a French class and have found it and the accompanying CD's a really good way to tackle French.

I have never learnt French before (not even a try) and my school uses it as the textbook for a summer intensive course (Elementary French I). I find it quite useful, at the end of the day, I have learnt most of its content and find myself capable of writing a reasonably meaningful essay in French--with a dictionary, of course. It earns 4 stars from me simply because it does its job: teaching basic French.
Two things I don't like very much: grammar points and kind of are kind of scattered even within one chapter, so sometimes you miss important information; also, for each chapter, vocabularies are divided into two parts, for which I can't see the point. Secondly, for the conjugation of verbs, why are we learning irregular ones first, and after all the effort internalizing the irregular ones, we then learn the normal conjugations? Third, I think it will make more sense if it teaches me more about verbs and nouns and adjectives that are most frequently used, instead of all those marginal words about furniture, vegetables and clothing. But that's not the worst--in my Vietnamese textbook, I even had a chapter teaching vocabularies about different hair styles...

The company who sold me the book was very helpful in refunding the money and was very kind about the process. I would buy from them again in the future!

This book was ok, but the CD's that coame with it were missing. When it said new, that is what I assumed. You are better off purchasing this book from a campus store. For the extra $50.00, because that is how much the CD's cost without the book.