A language learners’ forum

Many thanks for all the good suggestions.

These books are not cheap!

Thank you.

The French Embassy tweeted out this list for #BookLoversDay of current best sellers (in French) and recently translated (in English) "romans de l'été", e.g., "beach reads" or "romans de gare" . There was one or two that I find tempting, and thought others may find the list of interest.

https://franceintheus.org/spip.php?article8694

Carmody wrote:
The Ultimate French Review and Practice by Stillman and Gordon*

This last one is the best book I could find, but surely there is a better one that has greater depth and breadth.

What are some things you wanted to see but did not see in this book, depthwise and breadthwise?

Smallwhite

You are incredible. Your laser-like questions are nothing short of riveting. Thank you so much! Absolutely nothing passes you by. I really do learn from your questions. Also a note to say that given the fact that you are Black Belt - 1st Dan and I am only Blue Belt, B1 in my French, I realize I am on thin ice and will do my best to be respectful.

Where is my grammar book lacking? A totally fair question. Herewith some answers:

A brief summary:
French Grammar, A Complete Reference Guide-too abbreviated
Bescherelle--conjugation only; too abbreviated
French Verbs and Essentials of Grammar by Simone Oudot-too abbreviated.
Essential French Grammar by Seymour Resnick-too abbreviated
French DeMystified by Annie Heminway-too abbreviated
The Ultimate French Review and Practice by Stillman and Gordon*

The Ultimate French Review and Practice does more than the others, but does not cover material comprehensively enough for my needs if I were to go for B1 with DELF/DALF.
Examples:

-Chp. 25 lists Past Subjunctive, Literary Subjunctive as topics, but then literally ignores Literary Subjunctive within the chapter. Really; how fair is that?

-Chp. 10 does not cover the Pluperfect, Future Perfect; Conditional Perfect in the depth needed.

-Chp. 13 on nouns, ignores many of the rules needed for learning genders for French nouns.

-the different chapters on adjectives totally omit the rule that all adjectives of color should follow a noun.

-the book totally omits a discussion of how to handle past participles without auxilary verbs. If Bescherelle in all its few pages can touch on the topic than why can't this thicker book cover it.

It simply does not cover material comprehensively enough for my needs.

Fortunately, there are many websites to choose from:
Cliffsnotes
https://www.cliffsnotes.com/study-guides/french/french-ii
and many others like
Lawlessfrench
https://www.lawlessfrench.com/

However I am a book guy and need to underline and review constantly. I have to hold a book in my hands and make notes. It is just who I am. It is the reason you are Black Belt -1st Dan and I am only a Blue Belt.

I don’t want an encyclopedic book like Le Bon Usage, however if a book is to have a title of
The Ultimate French Review and Practice then it would seem fair to me to expect it to be more comprehensive, not necessarily encyclopedic.

Finally, and most importantly, I make no excuses for not getting higher marks in my tests. I am definitely not blaming the textbooks. Maybe there are more comprehensive grammar books out there, but I have not found them.There are certainly many magnificent websites to help with grammar, so, if I had a question then I should have tracked down the answer.

Do you think my expectations are unrealistic? You are the one with the expertise, not me.

Thanks as always for your guidance.

Carmody wrote:
The Ultimate French Review and Practice does more than the others, but does not cover material comprehensively enough for my needs if I were to go for B1 with DELF/DALF.

I consider Ultimate my B2 syllabus but then I look things up online as well. For a more advanced grammar I used A Comprehensive French Grammar (original author Glenville Price) which is more a reference than a textbook like Ultimate. I don't have access to Comprehensive now so I can't check if it covers the things you're after, but I remember it had many pages on the different noun gender endings.

Lawless often referenced Robert/Bon Usage kind of books (I don't remember the exact titles) when writing for About.com so her work on About.com and likely on LawlessFrench.com as well would be a good digested/filtered/simplified version of those books for a B2-ish audience.

Many thanks for the response.
Am very tempted to buy A Comprehensive French Grammar.
You thought it worthwhile?

Pronunciation Training?

Hi everyone - I have some questions about self-studying French pronunciation that I hope to get help with. I'm trying to find a good 'method' to getting my english mouth to get use to making french sounds. A big challenge is the r!

I've come resources such as:

• Fluent Forever French Pronunciation Trainer
• Olle Kjellin Repetition Method
• 500 exercise de phonetique
• Anne Le Grand on UDemy - 'Sound Like a Native'
• Various YouTube videos

...and many more. My problem is that I become overwhelmed by the choice then struggle to pick one and stick with it.

Can anyone suggest how I could make use of 15-30 minutes per day to focus on pronunciation improvement? (This would form part of my present 2-3 hour french learning which consists of some TV & radio news, reading, assimil with ease and clozemaster).

bretagne, I suggest that you consider using the "FSI French Phonology course" as a supplement to your current studies. You may wish to refer to the discussion of this course from August, 2017.

FSI French Phonology course - LLORG - August, 2017
https://forum.language-learners.org/viewtopic.php?f=19&p=81384#p81384

FSI French Phonology course - Yojik website
https://fsi-languages.yojik.eu/languages/FSI/fsi-french-introduction-phonolgy.html

Vas-y, t'es capable!

bretagne wrote:Pronunciation Training?

Hi everyone - I have some questions about self-studying French pronunciation that I hope to get help with. I'm trying to find a good 'method' to getting my english mouth to get use to making french sounds. A big challenge is the r!

Can anyone suggest how I could make use of 15-30 minutes per day to focus on pronunciation improvement? (This would form part of my present 2-3 hour french learning which consists of some TV & radio news, reading, assimil with ease and clozemaster).

I've heard the FSI course is good, so I'm sure you can't go wrong with that. However, I found it really dry, so I chose to use this short course from the University of Michigan: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cc_X4Ho ... 3dxwP&t=0s. I worked on it for about 10 minutes each day (2-3 videos) and finished it in a few weeks. However, I learned the French R as a child, so I can't tell you how useful that part will be. The vowel part was indispensable for me.

You could always try something like this YouTube course as an overview, and then follow up with the FSI French Phonology course.

zjones wrote: I chose to use this short course from the University of Michigan: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cc_X4Ho ... 3dxwP&t=0s.

Speakeasy wrote:bretagne, I suggest that you consider using the "FSI French Phonology course" as a supplement to your current studies.

Thanks to both of you. I will try both out. Today, I gave the University of Michigan videos a try for about an hour and my mouth hurts, which is a good sign I guess!