French: A Self-Teaching Guide

Suzanne A. Hershfield - Haims has written a clear, lucid and comprehensive text-book for people who want to start learning French. It is the best text-book on French I have come across for helping the student build a strong and sound foundation from which to pursue further study. I recommend this book highly to those who want to master French.

If you want to learn french and use this book as your only resource, expect to spend several hours working on different sentences and excercises throughout the book. However, all the effort is worthwhile, as the authors use daily speeches and conversations to take you from learning the basics of French, starting a conversation, to learning to speak French confidently and starting your own conversations in French also.

I purchased this book after satisfactorily using the Italian book of the same series in a beginning Italian class. I wanted a book in French without the cutsy pictures and the comic book mentality of some of the more well-known workbooks on the market and focused mainly on the desire of obtaining a no-nonsense review of the French language that I could use as a self-learning tool. I found this book provided a good initial overview that I could use in conjunction with other French learning tools and a native French teacher. It is by no means the only book I would use. I like this book's format; each chapter begins with a grouping of vocabulary words, verbs and expressions that are used within the chapter in a dialogue and as an introduction to the expression usage and grammar that follows. Exercises follow and yes, they implement structures and words that are not yet covered, but as with any other language book, this does not befuddle the learner into a stupor that disallows him from getting the point of the exercise. Besides, that is what the dictionary is for. I doubt if this is the only book I would purchase if I were totally ignorant of the language and my pursuit of learning French was realistic. It is one of many books that I own to get certain points across and inside my dull foreign language impaired brain. I like the fact that specific situations like 'a family birthday', 'a trip to the train station', 'shopping in a department store' and 'eating in a restaurant' that are normally the situations one would find oneself in whether in a foreign country or not, are included complete with vocabulary in one concentrated and easy to find area. Rules of grammar are boxed off as are conjugations--sometimes the author shortcuts the conjugations by just showing the endings--I would have found it more helpful to actually see the actual completed conjugation. I agree that this book is an overview. It can by no means supply the user with every idiomatic phrase used by the modern French speaker. Heavens, entire tomes are written on this subject alone and in all sorts of formats! But, I do think that using this book as a private workbook or in conjunction with a good teacher would more than satisfy even the most cynical language book reviewer. Just last night I scanned the book and penciled in the answers to a number of the exercises merely to make sure I understood grammatical concepts that I learned years ago---the dogged nature of the book's format did help me to remember and the correct answers are included in the review at the end of each five chapter grouping.I would categorize this book as a good functional refresher to those who have studied French before, want a concise overview or use it in a classroom situation with a good teacher. There is no pronunciation guide (no individual phonetic spelling of each vocabulary word or phrase) and no accompanying CD to help you get at least a semblance of a French accent. In addition to this

This book is great. I recently decided to brush up on french for my next vacation to Martinique. I haven't taken french since high school. This book is great because it starts off with some simple vocabulary, some grammar and pronounciations rules,and voila! you are learning and speaking french. If you have already studied french then the language starts to come back to you and the book makes learning very easy. There are many exercises after each section to help reinforce the vocabulary learned. The book is divided up very well into sections like: Basic Expressions, At the Restaurant, At the Airport, etc. So the sections are functional, especially if you plan to use what you learn. Great book for the beginner and anyone who wants to brush up!