The Complete Idiot's Guide to Learning French

by Gail Stein

Book Overview

One of Alpha's perennial best-selling language titles, The Complete Idiot's Guide to Learning French , Fourth Edition, is more-than-ever the most useful book on learning French available. Completely... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1592570550
• ISBN13: 9781592570553
• Release Date: May 2003
• Publisher: Alpha Books
• Length: 438 Pages
• Weight: 1.76 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 7.4" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Best of it's Kind

No one is going to become fluent in French by reading a book. But a book can give you enough of an idea to jump start your learning one or refresh your memory of what you learned in that French class you took in high school decades before. This book is the best of the "Idiot" type guides. It has the easiest type face to read. The explanations of the language are clear. The drills support what you are trying to learn. The pronunciation guide for words is the clearest of any of books of this type that I saw. Learning a language requires a lot of time and effort. This book doesn't eliminate those two requirements but it makes it a little easier to do it. Thank you Gail Stein for making this book as clear as can be.

Great book

This is a good book if you're going to travel to French speaking countries - not to learn French. However, you do get some basics from this book but enough to hit even Level 1

A GREAT LEARNING TOOL....

This is a great learning tool. Practical, everyday useful sentence structures along with a great multimedia CD that helps with pronunciation. Since learnng another language is a life time job, this book offers a well thought out review of French grammar.

A useful midlevel book for learning French...

This book is not perfect, but it is a good place to start if you're looking for a book which is well structured and don't mind the fact that there are no tapes or CDs. I took French for four years in high school, so I cannot really comment on how effective it is for persons who've never taken French at all. But I did find it very useful as a refresher course and for looking up grammatical rules and general info.There are six overall sections, broken down into various chapters. They are: The Very Basics; Travel; Fun and Games; Problems; Let's Get Down to Business; and the Answer Key. Each section proceeds in a logical fashion, and there are often sidebars such as "Pitfalls", "As a Rule", and "Cultural Tidbits." These help break things up and keep it interesting while you're slogging along through a series of verbs or lists of items. There are often pronunciation guides for words, which are surprisingly useful, and there are sample sentences for common usage and everyday situations.All in all this book is a good value for the price and I wouldn't hesitate to buy it again.

Learn French in a Friendly Environment

For those who wish to learn French on their own, complicated instructions are the last thing you want to see in your guide books to French. This book is written in an easy-going manner that puts you at ease. When the author talks about conjugation, she does not neglect to define 'conjugate' so that readers do not have to look for English dictionaries or English grammar books to find out what 'conjugate' really means. I believe one can learn to speak, read and write reasonably good French through this book. I hope to be able to read the French judgments of the International Court of Justice after I complete my course. A little too ambitious perhaps, but achievable.