French grammar text books?

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MrsStarez
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French grammar text books?

Postby MrsStarez » Sun Sep 30, 2018 8:26 am

Unfortunately, I think my university-level French grammar books went to the charity shop as part of a house de-cluttering exercise a year or so ago. I’m hoping that the Oxfam shop in town still has it, so I can buy it back :-)

I have no idea what the run rate is on French grammar books in a town full of students, but I’m not hopeful it will still be there. Can anyone recommend a decent replacement please?
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MrsStarez
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Re: French grammar text books?

Postby MrsStarez » Sun Sep 30, 2018 8:28 am

PS - I know there are lots of excellent resources online but I’m old-fashioned and like a paper book.
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Re: French grammar text books?

Postby zenmonkey » Sun Sep 30, 2018 8:38 am

Bescherelle Grammaire - The one and only. You should be able to find a used copy for less than $10.
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Re: French grammar text books?

Postby MamaPata » Sun Sep 30, 2018 8:59 am

*Disappears to go and order a Bescherelle*

I quite like Schaum's, and I know other people on the forum have recommended the Grammaire Progressive.
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Re: French grammar text books?

Postby zenmonkey » Sun Sep 30, 2018 1:48 pm

MamaPata wrote:*Disappears to go and order a Bescherelle*

I quite like Schaum's, and I know other people on the forum have recommended the Grammaire Progressive.


I found the Grammaire Progressive workbooks to be excellent and useful. I like those.
Bescherelle is just the single most useful reference I was pushed to use by my ex.
As head of a French Lit department, it's her tool of choice for grammar questions.

I haven't used Schaum's.
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Re: French grammar text books?

Postby Querneus » Sun Sep 30, 2018 6:37 pm

Bescherelle: La Grammaire doesn't come with exercises, but it is definitely a grammar written simply enough that you can read it from cover to cover learning all the important grammatical patterns from it. Its examples are very short and to the point.

Mary E. Coffman Crocker's Schaum's Outline of French Grammar is better (in my opinion) for the specific topics it covers, which are narrower in scope, and it comes with exercises.

The Grammaire Progressive series is excellent with good exercises, but you'll find yourself amassing more than one book. They come in various levels.

Rodney Ball, Colloquial French Grammar is very interesting as it tries to teach Anglophones the grammatical patterns of informal spoken Parisian French, as spoken back in 2000 at least. The vocabulary is not up to date anymore, but the grammatical patterns are still used (and, curiously, have been used for centuries, as much of what is found in it also applies to the grammar of Quebec French with only mild modifications). It comes with exercises. Please note that the dialogues are exaggeratedly colloquial as a teaching tool; people don't normally talk with that density of colloquialisms.

Malcolm Offord's A Student's Grammar of French is interesting for its wide coverage and its complex examples (I've never seen any other grammar with example sentences that long, sometimes going over three lines, especially when the grammatical point being made is very simple!), and comes with some exercises. I don't recommend it all that much, unless you want to practise reading its examples of grammatical points. Every example comes with a good English translation. The examples are not lofty and literary, but seem to be taken from unsourced newspapers, magazines and advertisements, judging by their content.



How can I review so many books, you ask? I like grammar and have a thing for grammar books, okay? :lol:
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MrsStarez
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Re: French grammar text books?

Postby MrsStarez » Sun Sep 30, 2018 6:41 pm

Thanks for the suggestions. It looks like my university book was snapped up by someone in the local charity shop so I’ll look out copies of these :-)
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Re: French grammar text books?

Postby DaveAgain » Sun Sep 30, 2018 7:22 pm

Ser wrote:Rodney Ball, Colloquial French Grammar is very interesting as it tries to teach Anglophones the grammatical patterns of informal spoken Parisian French, as spoken back in 2000 at least. The vocabulary is not up to date anymore, but the grammatical patterns are still used (and, curiously, have been used for centuries, as much of what is found in it also applies to the grammar of Quebec French with only mild modifications). It comes with exercises. Please note that the dialogues are exaggeratedly colloquial as a teaching tool; people don't normally talk with that density of colloquialisms.

How can I review so many books, you ask? I like grammar and have a thing for grammar books, okay? :lol:
This is fantastically annoying. I don't like grammar books, and now I want to buy this one.

You're leading me astray Ser!
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