 Return to the FRENCH Archive | Forward to the Current FRENCH Forum |
| morprussell | Thursday 03rd of February 2005 12:07:11 PM |
| French Textbook - Hi, I am going to start learning French soon. Can anyone suggest a good French textbook? I have never studied French before, so the book would have to be for an absolute beginner. Thank you.
Morgan | |
| Caramelicious | Thursday 03rd of February 2005 06:03:26 PM |
| - Hi Morgan, I am also a beginner, the book I use I think is good for beginners, it is called "Discovering French" it is the Bleu version. It explains things very well and even has a "Note Culturelle" where based upon the Leçon and Unité you are in it will tell you something about the culture also. I find this book very useful in helping me. It has an entire leçon (just in case you havn't picked it up yet it is lesson) and then vocabulary that you will use during the Unité and Leçon. Then after you are done studying it has manay excersises that you can go through to practice. (Just in case you wanted to know, yes it does explain when talking about vocab, the difference between masculine and feminine ending and things like that). It is printed by the McDougal Littel company, and is written by: Jean-Paul Valette and Rebecca M. Valette.
I hope this is enough information to get you where you are going! Good Luck Learning French! | |
| morprussell | Saturday 05th of February 2005 03:25:05 AM |
| Sounds good . . . - Thanks for your reply Caramelicious, does anyone else have any suggestions? | |
| tinkerb | Saturday 05th of February 2005 06:58:54 AM |
| - I'm familiar with some texts used at the university level (US) but they usually don't work too well without an instructor. If you're looking for one of those, [i]Paroles[/i] is a student-friendly text that also has CD-Rom listening and activity practise. This wouldn't be my choice to teach myself French, but it gets points for being user-friendly and having so many exercises (workbook, lab manual, CD-Roms).
One book I find quite helpful for grammar is [i]Schaum's Easy Outlines French[/i] by Mary Coffman Crocker. It has very easy to understand explanations, vocabulary illustrations, and is quite compact. I'd rate the usefulness very high, but the book lacks exercises so you'll have to complement it with other books. | |
