Beginning French for the Utterly Confused will, no doubt, leave you a bit less confused once you complete your foray through its vocab and grammar-heavy pages. Although you will not be gabbing away in perfect French any time soon after completing this text, you will certainly come away with a firm foundation in place for future language learning. At the risk of sounding corny, I must suggest you say “Oui!” to giving Beginning French for the Utterly Confused an utterly straight-forward try!
Although Beginning French for the Utterly Confused is indeed meant to be a beginner’s textbook, I wouldn’t recommend giving it a try if this is your first exposure to the language. Although this textbook does cover the basics of vocabulary and grammar, it seems generally aimed at easing the journey back into the language after you’ve been away for a bit. Which is why each chapter opens with a section titled: “Do I Need to Read This Chapter?” This part of the segment lists what will be featured in the chapter both regarding communication skills (introducing yourself, etc.) and vocab and grammar. This feature makes it easy to navigate the book if you’re doing a cram review and only want to look over specific aspects of the language.
Once you decide to study a chapter, the next section you’ll see is a dialogue. Unfortunately, this text doesn’t come with a CD-ROM to facilitate the student’s pronunciation, but each sentence of the dialogue does feature the pronunciation right below so studying up without outside oral assistance isn’t impossible. What follows is an English translation of the dialogue and then the student is tossed deep into the related vocabulary and grammar.
The vocab and grammar sections are quite thorough and Beginning French for the Utterly Confused seems determined to make sure there are no doubts when it comes to the meaning of individual words, the conjugation of verbs, or the proper use of personal nouns. A plus here is that there isn’t always just a single dialogue, vocabulary, and grammar lesson per chapter – there can be up to two. The big bonus of each chapter is definitely the exercises at the end of each: these require hands-on work varying from translation drills to vocabulary work.
"This textbook is absolutely ideal if the student is looking to review and will work well on solo reviews – meaning you don’t need a teacher around in order to make full use of this text."
There’s truly no big downside to using Beginning French for the Utterly Confused as long as you understand that its purpose isn’t to teach complete beginners the basics of the French language. This textbook is absolutely ideal if the student is looking to review and will work well on solo reviews – meaning you don’t need a teacher around in order to make full use of this text. Don’t be afraid to dive in whole-heartedly and let Beginning French for the Utterly Confused work its magic and make French just a little less confusing for you!
