English Grammar for Students of French: The Study Guide for Those Learning French

that this book has a website (oliviahill.com) where they list 16 different popular textbooks for learning french. Click on yours (mine is French in Action) and you are treated to a chapter and grammar topic breakdown of your textbook. For each grammar topic, they list the relevant reading you should do in this book before starting with your textbook lesson. You will be prepared ahead of time, and already comfortable with the concepts as they relate to the english language. This seems to me to be a pretty big bonus. You can refer to the other reviews as to how good the book is or isn't, because I just started with the course and the book. But it does seems simple, concise, and user-friendly. Don't panic when you see whole "chapters" being listed to read for one concept--the chapters are usually two simple pages that take just a few minutes to read. I was kind of a snob about where I thought I stood on grammar, and got this book "just in case." But I already see that there is a lot of detail I either forgot or never knew. As to how clear French in Action would have made things without this book, I don't yet know, but I'm glad I didn't try to skim by with a rough understanding.

I am surprised that others have not found this book useful. As an English major in college (someone you would expect to have a greater-than-average grasp on grammar) I found myself lacking in a number of grammer concepts. When you study French, you are confronted with concepts like "definite,indefinite and partitive articles". Now, in English, you will often use the article which "sounds right". This is actually when you compare your mental database of conversations,schooling, etc to the 2 or 3 options listed, and make an educated guess. Often, you can guess the right answer without actually understanding why it is the right answer, or understanding the concept behind the article. This book is great for understanding this type of problem. The book explains what an article is (the, a , an) and how they are used in English. Then the book gives you the complementary article in French (de, de l',du) and how it is used in French. This greatly helped my understand my native English, and how to translate my ideas into French. The book also covers tense. Even in English, tense is not just past,present and future;tense is also ideas like "am going to go" "I was going to go" and "I am going right now". The book covers the idea of possessive adjectives (my,yours,his), possessive pronouns (mine,yours, his) which look almost identical in English, and demonstrative pronouns like "this one" and "those/these". However, this book is an easy read. It is not in "grammer-ese". It is well broken up, so that chapters are only 2-6 pages - enough that you can do one concept at a time.Concepts are explained very simply and examples are given that make it easy to understand. This book is well worth buying.

I am the author of this book and could not find a way to communicate with your site to tell you that you have an outdated edition of the book on your site. The book is in the Fifth edition and you are selling the Fourth. You do have a way for publishers or authors to communicate with you?Thank you.

I have taught French at a university for 32 years, and have recommended this book to my students through all its editions. Many of today's college students were never taught anything at all about grammar in high school, making it difficult to grasp concepts like "the adjective agrees with the noun." This will take the mystery out of grammatical terminology. Parallel examples in English and in French make explanations clear. This latest edition has added exercises. I believe that it's well worth the money. Foreign language learning is much easier when the general concepts can be grasped and clearly understood. This book will help you do that.

What a find! This book is well written, and has grammer rules laid out in a logical format. Unlike many other grammer books this text uses French-language examples alongside English phrases to demonstrate proper usage. A quiz is included at the end of each chapter. I use this text for reference in teaching 4th year AP French high school students, and recommend it highly to any student of French.