A french grammar complement to assimil

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lusan
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A french grammar complement to assimil

Postby lusan » Sat Dec 01, 2018 6:51 pm

I just jumped into the French train and today I finished New Assimil with Ease Lecon 11. I find the method very comfortable, enjoyable, and ease... because French is so similar to Spanish, my mother tongue. I joked, with my wife, that French sounds like mispronounced and distorted Spanish.

But I am feeling uneasy. I think that I need a simple grammar book to complement it. Without grammar, I feel blind. I suspect it is because the many hours of Polish grammar studies. I have checked many available books and I found them overwhelming. Most of them appear created for academic purposes. I have no desire to pass hour upon hours doing exercises that I could use to read at Lingq. It would be nice to find something presenting systematically the grammar for self-studies.

Is there any ease French Grammar book? Am I asking for too much? May be I just should wait into finishing Assimil and then look further into this grammar world. What about that?
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Re: A french grammar complement to assimil

Postby zjones » Sat Dec 01, 2018 7:02 pm

I used Assimil NFWE to learn French and enjoyed it very much. For grammar, I supplemented the course with Easy French Step-by-Step. It's a simple grammar but contains exercises and goes over everything you need for a proper understanding of French grammar. It's meant for self-study, too. The only thing I didn't like about this book is that it doesn't contain a CD (so you'll have to use a website like http://www.forvo.com if you want to check your pronunciation), and most of the tenses were crowded into the last few chapters of the book. You could work on different chapters simultaneously, though.

I've also heard good things about Ultimate French Review and Practice and Essential French Grammar (Dover Language Guides). The former has exercises, the latter does not.

To be honest, any grammar book with the title containing "Easy" and "French" will probably be fine. Any beginner French grammar book will be better than nothing at all.
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Re: A french grammar complement to assimil

Postby zenmonkey » Sat Dec 01, 2018 7:59 pm

Along with the above recommendations, look also into the Grammaire Progressive series and Practice Makes Perfect series. Both are very good.
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Re: A french grammar complement to assimil

Postby MrsStarez » Sat Dec 01, 2018 8:15 pm

I asked a similar question a while ago - here's the response I had:

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.
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Re: A french grammar complement to assimil

Postby Elexi » Sat Dec 01, 2018 10:13 pm

I found Jacqueline Morton's English Grammar for Students of French to be a great accompaniment to texts like Assimil.
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Re: A french grammar complement to assimil

Postby tomgosse » Sat Dec 01, 2018 10:20 pm

lusan wrote:
Is there any ease French Grammar book? Am I asking for too much? May be I just should wait into finishing Assimil and then look further into this grammar world. What about that?


I like this book. French Demystified This is the second edition that comes with a CD. The third edition requires you to log into the web and I found that a real hassle.
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Re: A french grammar complement to assimil

Postby lusan » Sat Dec 01, 2018 11:14 pm

tomgosse wrote:
lusan wrote:
Is there any ease French Grammar book? Am I asking for too much? May be I just should wait into finishing Assimil and then look further into this grammar world. What about that?


I like this book. French Demystified.


Why do you like it? I have it but I hate exercises and quizzes. There must be a better way. Just straight to the point. Maybe I am asking too much, but I am aware of research on the useless of grammar exercises for language learning.
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Re: A french grammar complement to assimil

Postby smallwhite » Sat Dec 01, 2018 11:43 pm

Since your L1 is Spanish,

- https://ielanguages.com/frenchindex.html “Index of French Lessons”
or
- Wikipedia > French Grammar https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_grammar

is probably all you need.
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Re: A french grammar complement to assimil

Postby Fortheo » Mon Dec 03, 2018 4:24 pm

I used Hugo's French in three months alongside assimil for a while. It's direct, conveniently organized, and a very good overview of french grammar.

Courses like schaums or practice makes perfect are great, but they're extensive and in my opinion they can be overwhelming for beginners.
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Re: A french grammar complement to assimil

Postby Fortheo » Tue Dec 04, 2018 8:51 am

lusan wrote:
Why do you like it? I have it but I hate exercises and quizzes. There must be a better way. Just straight to the point. Maybe I am asking too much, but I am aware of research on the useless of grammar exercises for language learning.


If you don't want a book filled with exercises, then "Essential French Grammar (Dover Language Guides Essential Grammar)"

Will give you a decent overview of the grammar.
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