French for reading book REVIEW

French for Reading

Karl C. Sandberg, Eddison C. Tatham

1997

By	Maria B (Seattle, WA)

This review is from: French for Reading (Paperback)

Regarding using this book to help with speaking: This book has nothing about pronunciation, so if you care about speaking I recommend learning general spelling and pronunciation rules beforehand, so you have an idea of how to read this stuff aloud properly in case you find yourself inadvertently doing so. I had had some French in school, but I also listened to all three levels of Pimsleur French, which I found helpful for pronunciation practice. I would also recommend Pronounce It Perfectly in French for good spelling/pronunciation instruction.

But that's a different matter from how great this book is. I found it particularly wonderful because of the little guarantee on the back--that it covers all aspects of French grammar as required for overseas French schools. I got the feeling that after I had mastered this book, I wouldn't have to worry about running across some huge and surprising gap in my body of French knowledge. So far, that has held true.

This book is pretty hardcore, and I found it hard to be motivated to study it without having some concrete goal--mine was a trip to France. I had always eschewed reading, claiming I only cared about speaking--but I have realized that as an adult, it's much easier to pick up grammar quickly by reading, and since reading is easier than speaking/understanding, it gives you an early basis for general confidence in the language.

So, with a goal in mind, I painstakingly went through this book in (I think it was) about two months, making sure I knew all covered vocabulary and grammar before moving on, and then reviewing earlier chapters as suggested in the book. I also used it in conjunction with Mastering French Vocabulary: A Thematic Approach, another book which I have greatly appreciated. I made (electronic) flashcards with vocabulary from both books, which I found to be exceedingly helpful. (I used the program SuperMemo with a PDA--I highly recommend it.) I think I probably spent about 10-12 hours per week on it.

After you're done with this book, you can check out other grammar books to review and clarify points that you need extra help with. The book is organized in an order that I guess was best for learning, but there is no good summary of verb endings, for example, so I especially liked the Schaum's Easy Outline for this type of thing.

I'm not a graduate student and I don't need to pass any exams, so I can't vouch for the book's capabilities in that area, but I can say it gave me confidence in reading, and in conjunction with the vocabulary book I was using, gave me confidence in understanding the spoken word, which is a first step toward confidence in speaking. There are lots of other things to do to improve one's speaking skills, but I think a big component is confidence, and this book was really helpful. Not to mention it's nice to be able to read things in French and not feel like it's "foreign" and that there are more things in each sentence that I don't know than that I do.

One final thing I can say about this book is that it is definitely not a waste of time! If you already know the material covered in a certain chapter, you can move through it quickly, and it's probably a good review, but if you don't already know it, you'll learn essential information. I highly recommend this for anyone with a low level of French who wants to make a concerted effort to greatly improve in a condensed period of time--which is how I was--and I'm sure it's useful for others, too.

Who still wants to learn languages?

• • Aida Edemariam
  • guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 24 August 2010 21.00 BST

The new GCSE results show foreign languages are in severe decline – with the number of children learning French and German falling most dramatically of all. Aida Edemariam asks what this means for our universities, our economy, and the future of Britain

[...] Ever since the previous government decided, in 2004, to make language learning optional after the age of 14, the numbers have been dropping.

[...] Making languages optional was, O'Neill says, partly about improving access to education for the less able. Unfortunately, this was founded on "an illusion that a good education for children of fewer advantages is to introduce more choice, and introduce subjects where it's easier to get As and Bs. It's such a silly take on improving access."

[...] Of all the usual languages offered in schools, German suffers most. If only one language is offered, it is, for historical reasons, usually French. And if two languages are offered, German is increasingly pipped to the post by Spanish.

[...] Teachers of German are also increasingly competing with other influences — Japanese, for example. [...] Mandarin Chinese is also among the fastest growing languages in schools, with GCSE entries up 5% on last year, and the number of pupils taking a GCSE in Arabic has almost doubled since 2002.

[...] Managements across the spectrum, from primary school to postgraduate study, seem to see cutting languages as the obvious way reduce their costs. Language classes are intensive, requiring small class sizes, so, as Sarah Colvin, Mason chair of German at the University of Edinburgh, recently told the Guardian, "at a time when university funding is being severely reduced, languages look like an easy way to save money."

"I did French until year two," says Philippa Grogan, now 15, "but then the school couldn't afford to have a French teacher any more, so I stopped.

[...] German is spoken by 101 million people worldwide, and Germany is, says Finlay, "our single most important trading partner. It's one of the world's largest exporters. It's an economic giant, a key player in the European union." German is, as O'Neill puts it, "the language the employers say they most want to have." It is true, says Kelly, that many Germans speak English – "but they are proud of their own language and are pleased if potential partners can make a gesture towards it. And it's easier to buy things in English than to sell them." He quotes Willy Brandt: "If I'm selling to you, I speak your language. But if I'm buying, dann müssen Sie Deutsch sprechen." The impact on British exports is obvious.

FULL ARTICLE

Learning Italian through French, or a Third Language through a Second

BLOG "Jennie en France"

August 17th 2010

I’ve mentioned before that I find learning a third language using my second language much easier than using my native language. Currently, I am improving my Italian by using resources written in French rather than English. Switching from French to Italian takes much less effort than switching from English to Italian, and the same is true regarding German, so I’m reluctant to say it’s merely because of the genetic relatedness between French and Italian. Granted, learning two Romance languages together is probably easier than learning two unrelated languages for most people, but for me it’s more of a question of my second language having priority over my native language when other foreignlanguages are involved.

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I found these two comments from Jennie's post interesting:

Sashimi
I would like to share my experience in learning foreign languages too as I do think languages from the same family can help understand the other better.
I am a Chinese, graduated with a Japanese major in college. My best friend is Korean so I started self-learning Korean a while ago. I do find out that the books written in Japanese are easier to understand than those written in Chinese or English.
Right now, I'm working in an European company which most staff speak either French or German. As I am going to a company training in Luxembourg soon, I just started learning French. I feel lucky that I took an elementary Spanish class in college, which does help me a lot in learning French! The concept of masculine and feminine word, the conjugation in verbs, and the use of pronouns are quite similar between the two. Although French is still very hard for me, I am doing better than most of my classmates.

Shanna

I'm currently learning Japanese, which will be (hopefully) my 4th language. I'm mainly using resources in L3 (Korean) and I find that it makes learning Japanese more interesting! Also, Korean and Japanese have alot of similarities in terms of language and using Korean resources does help. At the same time, I can also improve and make use of my L3.