The book's material is divided into three broad sections: pronunciation and spelling, grammar and vocabulary. The spoken language is often neglected in language learning material and so a leading chapter on pronunciation (albeit short) was a welcome sight. The chapter gives basic hints such as "don't use the English /d/ sound before j in French words", "don't pronounce French -tion with a /sh/1 sound as in English" or "don't pronounce the r or z of a verb ending". Those looking for more technical descriptions or detail will be disappointed. The chapter admits to being a "basic guide" and recommends that for more information the reader consult a "book on French phonetics that includes the International Phonetic Alphabet"2. It would have been good to see some specific works recommended. I also feel that even without resorting to phonetic transcription, some other details of French pronunciation that differ from English (such as the lack of aspiration after voiceless plosives and fricatives, or the dental position of /d, t, l/) could still have been mentioned. Nonetheless, the chapter does succeed in explaining certain points of pronunciation in a simple way, and thus gives the beginner a grasp of some material not mentioned in other beginner to intermediate textbooks.
The chapter on spelling covers issues such as common homonyms (appelle vs appel, the -s- and -t- added to certain imperative forms, when to capitalise, and elision. Mention is also made of the 1990 spelling reform, although the author misrepresents the reform as being purely to do with the use of the circumflex (and fails to mention that in any case the reformed spellings have barely been adopted). Ironically, the author later labels as "blunders" spellings such as je jète and j'appèle (p. 167) which are in fact proposed in said spelling reform! More consistency is clearly called for here...
Then we move on to the largest section of the book, grammar. This is split into various chapters for the different parts of speech: nouns, descriptive adjectives (sic), determiners, numbers, a chapter on the use of pronouns, followed by several subchapters covering verbs before two final chapters on reported speech and questions and answers. On the whole, the section successfully mixes an overview of the basic points of each topic with some more in-depth material that is not always covered in other basic textbooks. The grammatical framework is largely traditional, which will make it readily understandable for intermediate learners but may not appeal to more advanced students. From time to time, the book's preoccupations reflect more the traditions and preoccupations of Francophone prescriptive grammars (that old chestnut the "sequence of tenses" rears its head on p. 219) than genuine issues for English-speaking learners. Occasionally the author's translation of a French term may be confusing for English speakers (past subjunctive is used for the perfect subjunctive whereas other works use this term for the imperfect subjunctive or as an umrella term for both-- perhaps the term should just be avoided altogether?). The author's prescriptive attitude appears at times to muddle her vision of what is genuinely a L2 error and what is a grammatical native-speaker utterance rejected by certain prescriptivists, both types of "error" being indiscriminately labelled as "blunders" (see the next section for examples).
But if you don't mind this perspective, the book does generally offer sound, pragmatic advice for both beginner and intermediate students, and manages to touch upon a number of more intricate points not covered by many textbooks at this level. Some points that I felt were well covered in this book include:
The final section on vocabulary covers issues such as false friends, translation of words that cause specific problems such as time, people, connaître vs savoir and relatively thorough coverage of certain prepositions. For a book of this level, the list of false friends is a little simplistic (e.g. pub is listed, without distinguishing between pub [pyb] meaning advertisement and [pœb] which does indeed mean pub). Only the meaning of the French word is given, and not the correct French translation of the expected meaning of the false friend. A chapter is rightly devoted to common prepositions, with à, de, en vs dans, sans, jusqu'à and chez getting particular attention. A summary table showing how to translate a few other common prepositions would have been a welcome round-off to this chapter. Finally, a chapter entitled constructions takes an English-French perspective, with issues such as "how to translate would".
Each chapter finishes with a couple of pages of exercises to test your comprehension of the chapter's material. Finally, at the back of the book is a set of exercises entitled "catch the blunders" relating to material contained throughout the book. A number of exercises are given, with words containing blunders highlighted in blue. More advanced students may prefer a version without the words highlighted (though I am not, of course, advocating illegal photocopying...). This seems a pertinent way to round off the book, and main criticism with these exercises is that there could have been twice as many (perhaps another set without the blunders highlighted?).
What's in it for you? Different parts of the book will appeal to learners at different levels, and the book will provide most people with something to 'grow into'.
|Pronunciation||pp. 3-13||pp. 13-15||(Revision)||--||--|
|Spelling||p. 17||pp. 17-22||pp. 17-27||(Revision)||--|
|Nouns||pp. 35-37; p. 46||pp. 35-40; pp. 47-49||pp. 41-46; pp. 50-52||p. 53||--|
|Adjectives||p. 55; p. 59-60; p. 63||pp. 55-64||pp. 65-68||pp. 65-68||p. 67?|
|Determiners||pp. 71-75||pp. 71-87||pp. 71-87||(Revision)||--|
|Numbers||pp. 90-91||pp. 90-94; pp. 97-101||pp. 90-103||pp. 95-106||(Revision)|
|Pronouns||p. 107||pp. 107-118||pp. 107-122||pp. 107-129||Revision plus pp. 128-132|
|Verbs||pp. 158-160; pp. 166-173||pp. 137-184||pp. 186-199||pp. 192-244||pp. 221-244|
|Vocabulary||--||pp. 277-289||pp. 277-301; 304-318||pp. 304-318; pp. 319-329||(Revision)|
1. The slant brackets are those of the book's author, although they clearly (I hope) are not intended to denote a phonemic transcription! This (mis)usage of the slant brackets could be misleading for students.
2. It is not clear why the author advocates specifically the IPA and not, for example, the American transcription system which is adopted by several works on French phonetics and phonology.