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Intermediate French Resources (B1 > B2) | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4917 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes  Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 1 of 8 13 June 2012 at 5:58am | IP Logged | |||||
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This summer I'd like to work my way through an intermediate-level French book. I'm already using a lot of native materials, but it would help to supplement them with a more guided, traditional course.
I've seen the following mentioned in the forums, but not discussed much. Can anyone offer any concrete advice on would be more useful, and which to avoid? Alter Ego 3 - Méthode de française (Hachette Fle, 2007; 192 p textbook, CD, cahier d'activités). I'm leaning towards this one, mostly for the CD. Grammair Progressive du français (CLE International, 2003; 271 p. plus corrigés). I believe this might also be the coursebook for students at the Sorbonne? Grammaire expliquée du français (CLE International, 2002; 430 p), possibly along with Difficultés expliquées du français for English Speakers (2004; 70 pages) and Vocabulaire expliquée du français (2004; 80p). I have these at home already: Using French (Assimil). I'll finish this next week. It's a useful book, and I'd recommend it. Like other Assimil books, it's good at giving you a broad understanding of the language, but helps more with reading and listening than speaking and writing. French Grammar in Context (Holder Arnold, 2008; 272 pages). I just started this one, and I like it a lot so far. Each chapter starts with a real-life reading (so far, a magazine article on Van Gogh and a selection from Camus), and then focuses on a single grammatical point. There are written translation and interpretation exercises. The first chapters took me about an hour each, so I suspect that I will finish the book in a month. FSI French Basic, Volume II (Lessons 13-24). It's free, I've printed out the text and downloaded the recordings already, but oh my is it a drag. I finished the first volume, and the first two lessons of Volume II, and it was invaluable. However, at this point I'd really prefer to have more interesting and dynamic readings. A perverse part of me still wants to finish Volume II, just because I read that almost no one does. The Ultimate French Review and Practice - I have an older version I found at a used bookstore, without the CD Rom of the newer versions. It's not very engaging, and I rarely even open it. Edited by kanewai on 13 June 2012 at 6:02am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| DaraghM Diglot Senior Member Ireland Joined 6179 days ago 1947 posts - 2923 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Russian, Hungarian | Message 2 of 8 13 June 2012 at 12:32pm | IP Logged | |||||
I've just started using this a couple of days ago. While it says it is intermediate, the topics covered at the start are very basic. I've checked towards the end of the book and they cover the subjunctive, but I'm not sure if it covers all the related compound tenses. You also need to purchase the answer key separately. I also picked up, Exercices Audio de Grammaire, Niveau Intermediaire: Grammaire Progressive Du Francais This book contains audio drills to cover the various grammar topics. It's meant to accompany the previous book, but I think it can be used on it own along with another grammar. The answers are included in the audio book. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5037 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 3 of 8 13 June 2012 at 12:46pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Alter Ego
A usual course book. Surely not bad, many teachers seem to prefer it to other popular series these days. But you should consider Alter Ego 4 as an option as well or as a follow up because 3 takes you only to B1. I have used the 4 a bit before my B2 exam and I liked especially the parts about writing. The listening exercises were nice but perhaps a bit too easy. Grammaire progressive Why would francophone students at Sorbonne use it? Never mind. It is a really good resource but doesn't cover all the grammar points for level B2, from my experience. The vocabulaire progressif series from the same publisher is wonderful. A great grammar exercise book with some explanation is l'Exercisier http://www.amazon.fr/Lexercisier-Manuel-dexpression-fran%C3% A7aise-B1- B2/dp/2706115866/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1339583599&sr=8-1 Grammaire Expliquée is something I thought of in past as well. Doesn't look bad but I didn't use it in the end. Instead, I did some exercises from this series 350 exercises http://www.amazon.fr/Grammaire-exercices-sup%C3%A9rieur-civi lisation- fran%C3%A7aise/dp/2010162897/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid= 1339583683&sr=1-2 which is quite often in the libraries. The rest seems good (I am going to try Using French in near future too, seems to use a lot of idioms and such things) but I'm unsure whether the volume 2 of FSI isn't too low level for what you intend, but it could surely help. http://www.amazon.fr/Edito-niveau-B2-CECR-fran%C3%A7ais/dp/2 278058290/ref=sr_1_2? s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1339583799&sr=1-2 Édito is a course I used at school for level B2. It is really good, in my opinion. Good reviews of grammar, aditional thematic vocabulary (but of course you need other vocab sources to really get to full B2), nice reading exercises, quite good listening. What helps me a lot is a huge book of translation exercises which take me out of my comfort zone and make me use all I have learnt. The one I use is Czech based but I suppose there is something like it in English as well. I hope this helped a bit. :-) 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4917 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 4 of 8 13 June 2012 at 10:19pm | IP Logged | |||||
Keep us posted on how the book goes for you! I might consider the Niveau avancé, then, though I don't consider myself 'advanced' at all. I just looked at some other books in their intermediate series, and they still look 'beginner' level to me. I guess even the French are guilty of grade inflation. (edit: I just read that the Intermediate level is for students with 200 to 250 hours of instruction behind them)
It helps immensely! I recall reading that the CLE Progressive series was for foreign students at the Sorbonne who needed to learn French, but I'm not sure where I read it. L'exerciser and Editó were also on my potential to-do list; thanks for reminding me of them. I definitely need more audio, translation, and written drills to cement what I know. That's the best part of FSI, even though I'm probably past the 'learning' stage of their books. And it looks like the Progressive series has lots of workbooks - I just found Advanced levels for Vocabulaire progressif, Littérature progressive, Civilization progressive, and Phonétique progressive. Now that I know what to look for I'm finding a lot of material. I'm leaning towards some of the Niveau avancée Progressive books - they seem to have a nice range, and I haven't seen anything like the "Phonétique" book before. I also learned a new word today: auto-apprentissage. It sounds much nicer than auto-didact. Edited by kanewai on 14 June 2012 at 2:48am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| sctroyenne Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5419 days ago 739 posts - 1312 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Spanish, Irish | Message 5 of 8 14 June 2012 at 1:34am | IP Logged | |||||
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I really like Grammaire Expliquee and Vocabulaire Expliquee and the one for English
speakers can be useful if you've never formally learned grammar. The second half or third of Grammaire Expliquee goes through all the connectors, which ones use subjunctive which don't, concordance du temps, etc. L'Exercier is also good. Vocabulaire Expliquee has tons of idiomatic expressions, plus lists of all the different expressions of the "basic" verbs with prepositions which was useful. There are none that I wouldn't recommend. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| murphykieran Newbie Ireland naturalfrench.net Joined 4586 days ago 4 posts - 4 votes Speaks: English* | Message 6 of 8 14 June 2012 at 2:51am | IP Logged | |||||
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If it's any consolation, we use Grammair Progressive du français in my university but it's
not Sorbonne 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5560 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 7 of 8 15 June 2012 at 7:28pm | IP Logged | |||||
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The two advanced French courses from Assimil (Using French, Business French) are rather
decent, if you're looking for some nice, pre-packaged input with notes. And if you were preparing for a DELF B2 Pro exam, Business French would be an amazing resource. I liked Essential French Grammar from Dover. It's cheap, short and full of example sentences. If you used an input-heavy, grammer-light method like Assimil, it will be a fast and informative read. I also love french.about.com, which is a reliable source for all kinds of French grammar questions. French Key Words and Expressions was surprisingly useful, and I actually loaded about 80% of the book into my Anki deck. It's probably also time to start looking for native dictionaries. I like Wiktionnaire (on line) and Larousse's native French dictionaries, because they tend to provide adequate definitions right away without lots of recursive lookups. For me, though, explicit grammar study was a pretty small portion of the work between B1 and (the general region of) B2. I did a fair bit of writing at Lang-8, which helped enormously with my grammar, and spent a lot of time studying interesting French sentences. Bon courage ! 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5458 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 8 of 8 16 June 2012 at 5:55pm | IP Logged | |||||
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There's a relatively new blog site, www.fluentfrenchnow.com, that has some interesting articles. Something to add to the toolbox.
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