Mastering French Grammar

by Michael Deneux

This brand-new title for students of French serves the double purpose as a combination workbook and a grammar instruction manual. It is filled with exercises and answers that emphasize informal, conversational language usage. Both the lessons and exercises are arranged progressively, from easy to more difficult, to reflect students' learning development. Mastering Grammar books make ideal supplementary companions to main classroom textbooks. They can also be used as main texts for adult education courses and for individuals learning a new language on their own.

Genres: France, Language, Nonfiction

240 pages, Paperback

First published May 25, 2007

Reviews

[Jess the Shelf-Declared Bibliophile · Rating 2 out of 5]

A good refresher book I grabbed from the library, but I really wished all the French sentences had translations. It didn’t do me much good because of that.

[Christopher · Rating 4 out of 5]

Barron's MASTERING FRENCH GRAMMAR is an English translation of a French grammar and workbook originally written in French by Michael Deneux. The 233-page book contains chapters each dealing with a particular aspect of French grammar followed by exercises (for which there is a key at the back). It covers not only such elementary matters as word order, declension of adjectives, and the very complicated world of French verbs, but also more advanced concepts like arithmetic in French and stylistics.

I found this book extremely helpful in going from a passive understanding of written French, gained mainly by experience with Latin and other Romance languages, to being able to actively speak and write French. If you already have some knowledge of French and want to reach fluency, Barron's workbook is an economical way to do so and I do recommend it.

However, I wish that the authors had mentioned at least some pronunciation quirks (like the -Vnt ending of 3rd person plural verbs being silent). Also, there are some typos, and at two point a word is left in German from the original version, e.g "fabrikneu" to give the right sense of "nouveau" is left untranslated.

[Sherlock Dong · Rating 4 out of 5]

average school book