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French advice for not so new beginner | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| GSUeagle Diglot Newbie United States Joined 4576 days ago 17 posts - 21 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French | Message 1 of 8 19 May 2013 at 2:38am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Well, in the year or so since I last visited here, I have taken my Spanish from high intermediate to basic fluency and lived in Mexico for six months. Now, I feel ready to return to a language that I stopped learning around 5 years ago. When I was in high school, I was pretty good at French, but I stopped learning it due to time constraints and not really knowing how to teach it to myself.
Fast forward until now, and I am ready to re-tackle the language. I still remember a lot of basic grammar and vocabulary, and now with my Spanish background French seems even more transparent than before. I don't have any plans or anything to do over the next 3 months for summer vacation, so I would like to revive my French and take it to the next level as I plan to perhaps pursue a double major in French and Spanish, if time permits. My plan as of now is to work through Assimil's NFWE and FWT over the next six or so months, but I want to also have an intensive element to the next three months as I can maximize my free time. I plan to listen to French every day (I have TV5Monde), as well as listen to podcasts, watch movies and episodes of French stuff, etc. My main concern though, is that I want an active component to make sure I am on the right track. Which brings me to the following questions/concerns: - Where can I find an extensive grammar workbook/reference grammar for French? What are your recommendations? I learned from studying Spanish that I actually love grammar, especially in action! - What are some good graded readers for French? - Is it too early to begin with L/R? My main concern about LR with French is the literary tense, I don't want to sound like some pompous guy speaking in parables. Is this not such a big deal with L/R? Thanks! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5343 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes  Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 2 of 8 19 May 2013 at 4:34am | IP Logged | ||||||||
My favorites are: Essential French Grammar. This is a really great overview of French grammar. It covers most of the major themes up through B1/B2, with good example sentences. The authors mostly focus on the regular verbs, adjectives, etc., and few essential irregular ones. There are no exercises. You can often buy it for $2–5 on Amazon. Grammaire progressive du français, niveau débutant. These are great grammar workbooks. They're written entirely in French, and they cover everything from very basic grammar up to C1 stuff. I've only used Perfectionnement, but the earlier books look quite good, too. The Rules for the Gender of French Nouns. This is a bit specialized, but the rules in this book will allow you to predict the gender of at least 75% of French nouns. You'll presumably get a big boost from Spanish here, too.
I can't help you for beginner stuff. But here are some good sources of easy, interesting books for young native speakers, many of which should be within reach by the end of your Assimil courses: Le Petit Prince. This is a good French classic that everybody reads. The ebook version is readily available in most big English-speaking countries and you can use it with a French popup dictionary. The Roman du monde series. I've read Nassim et Nassima, which I enjoyed, and I'm told the others are good, too. The Classiques et Contemporains collection. These are all conveniently sorted by reading level. Bandes dessinées, or French graphic novels. For a ton of suggestions, see this post in my log. Particularly recommended are Persepolis (which is excellent, and full of realistic conversational French) and Les Mondes d'Aldébaran series, which is surprisingly easy and can be rented as an online ebook for 2€/volume from Izneo (I think it was Geoffw who found this site.) For when you're ready to listen, see HTLAL's list of French movies and series with accurate subtitles. The French have been awful about subtitling stuff until just a few years ago, and I still buy brand new DVDs without subtitles.
The important tense here is the passé simple. It's not really a literary tense, at least not in the sense of being reserved for older literature—it's the standard narrative tense in virtually all French books. If you try to avoid it, you'll find that you have access to almost no books. Some really young kid's books are written in the present tense, certainly, but even 75% of the bedtime stories I read to my preschoolers use the passé simple. The only adult book I own which uses the spoken passé composé forms for narration is L'Étranger. So my advice is to come to terms with the passé simple as soon as you want to tackle native books. Fortunately, it's a very simple and regular tense, and most people internalize it within the first 100 pages or so, and maybe 15 minutes of actual study. But even through narration uses the passé simple, dialog will virtually always use the passé composé. So as long as you remember to speak like the characters in French books, and not the narrator, you'll be perfectly fine. :-) Edited by emk on 19 May 2013 at 6:11am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6408 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 3 of 8 19 May 2013 at 3:54pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Just a couple of resource recs:
GLOSS. I actually hate the French language, but I love the site so much that I've done some lessons there. (note: reading lessons also have audio. click "source" on top) http://lyricstraining.com/ I use it a lot for languages whose sound I like :P Edited by Serpent on 19 May 2013 at 3:55pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Paco Senior Member Hong Kong Joined 4088 days ago 145 posts - 251 votes Speaks: Cantonese* | Message 4 of 8 19 May 2013 at 8:44pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
GLOSS is awesome! It'd be even more so if the other site has got Persian and Russian! Edited by Paco on 19 May 2013 at 8:48pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| lorinth Tetraglot Senior Member Belgium Joined 4085 days ago 443 posts - 581 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish, Latin Studies: Mandarin, Finnish | Message 5 of 8 19 May 2013 at 9:32pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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If you really love grammar and you want something really detailed, you
can't beat Maurice Grevisse's "Le Bon Usage". The first edition was published in 1936, the 15th edition in 2011. It's pricey, but you'll be using it, no worshipping it, for the rest of your life :-) 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 4820 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 6 of 8 20 May 2013 at 8:59pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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The Grammaire Progressive series is awesome. Another good series is by Hachette and it
is older (about 5 levels ending with Superieur II). Or L'exercisier by PUG. I find it very useful to have a good and complete verb guide as well, there are several of good quality on the market. There are several series of graded readers, such as: http://www.blackcat-cideb.com/61-french-catalogue http://www.cle-inter.com/recherche-15.html Another and even more fun start for reading are BDs. Asterix or Persepolis might be the best at the beginning. Or something aimed at younger readers, I liked books by Évelyne Brisou-Pelen and Erik l'Homme. Or a translation. Harry Potter is a popular choise or I found translated True Blood to be a great thing. For listening, I recommend watching a good dubbed tvseries. I loved Grimm, emk has a great experience with Buffy. Even one season can do miracles. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| GSUeagle Diglot Newbie United States Joined 4576 days ago 17 posts - 21 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French | Message 7 of 8 20 May 2013 at 9:11pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Thanks for the information. In terms of verb guides, which have been the most useful in your opinion?
1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| lorinth Tetraglot Senior Member Belgium Joined 4085 days ago 443 posts - 581 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish, Latin Studies: Mandarin, Finnish | Message 8 of 8 20 May 2013 at 9:40pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
The "Bescherelle conjugaison" is a kind of golden standard, both user-friendly and exhaustive. It was used in schools when I was a kid, and it's still a recommended purchase in my own kids' school. Contrary to Grevisse's book, which I recommended for grammar, it's inexpensive too. Bescherelle's site. Edited by lorinth on 20 May 2013 at 9:41pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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