Taking the learner from "bonjour" all the way to handling medical emergencies, this book aims to provide you with everything you might need to know when travelling in a French-speaking country.
French for Dummies was designed for the absolute beginner of the French language. Taking the learner from "bonjour" all the way to handling medical emergencies, this book aims to provide you with everything you might need to know when travelling in a French-speaking country. With 21 chapters of French goodness, you are bound to come away feeling competent for your upcoming vacation.
French for Dummies falls right in line with everything that the Dummies series tries to emulate. It takes something intimidating, in this case French, and uses some humor and more than a few grains of salt to break it down for the average Joe. The book follows the Dummies theme of being light-hearted, and with a comic thrown in here and a fun cultural tip there, it’s an easy read that doesn’t feel like much work.
"To learn a language you have to use it, and the glaring lack of practice in the book just makes it a long grammar explanation instead of a language-learning book."
The last four chapters of the book were the highlight for me. Using 10 as its theme, the chapters list things like the Top Ten Things to Never say in French and the Top Ten Phrases to make you Sound French. I thought it was by far the most practical and fun aspect of the book. Putting the fun aside though, the book in general really requires very little of the learner, and therefore, is not a tool that I could recommend to many aspiring linguists.
Language books in general can fall into two kinds of categories: those designed for the travelers/tourists, and those designed for people actually wanting to become fluent. French for Dummies falls more into the tourist camp. With topics presented such as exchanging money and going through customs, there are many chapters that I would deem unnecessary or too situational-specific to bother learning in the beginning stages of language acquisition. The book is clearly geared towards those who just want to get around at their next jet-setting destination. If this is you, then this book is great; however, if you’re looking for a more comprehensive book on French, you might need to keep looking.
The biggest problem with this book, besides the topics covered, is that it provides very little practice with the language. The vast majority of the text is presentation of grammar and vocabulary followed by a dialogue and more grammar and vocabulary. Each chapter ends with one very short activity for practice, which usually consists of a simple object-identification or a fill-in-the blank paragraph. The learner is never challenged to write her own sentences or put the language into any kind of meaningful usage.
The book does provide a CD with dialogues to follow along with the book, which is a plus, but does not provide pronunciation of all the vocabulary words. A beginning student would benefit with far more modeling of the language than just a few short dialogues.
Honestly, I cannot recommend this book as a good guide purely for the lack of response required by the learner. To learn a language you have to use it, and the glaring lack of practice in the book just makes it a long grammar explanation instead of a language-learning book. If you’re looking for explanations, it is sufficient, but if you’re looking for something to guide you through the language acquisition, I would say, look elsewhere.
