Teach Yourself French Book 5th Edition Paperback – 31 Aug. 2007

my granddaughter hasn't used them yet but she was happy with my gift,.

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The "Teach Yourself..." series varies wildly in the quality of the course you are studying. Some are exemplary, and others... not so. This, sadly, falls into the latter category.It will do as it says, it should be noted. You can learn French from this course. The CDs (essential, by the way) are well recorded, with a very good pronunciation guide. Start at page one, persevere, and by the end you will be a francophone. But there are two very significant problems.The first, as others have noted, is that the organisation is a little haphazard. Certain vocabulary and grammatical constructs are learnt before more useful ones. What you will therefore find is that to be able to converse in a useful way with a French speaker, you will need to get a good chunk through the book (unless your conversation skills wish to end at "Hello"). Other texts will at least get you feeling as if you are making headway quickly. Not so here.The second, and more significant problem is that the book is about as dry as a pack of cream crackers. The text is uninspiring, the secondary information is at best pointless, and the dialogues range from the trite to the downright dull. What this means is that you will lose interest very, very quickly in using this book. If you don't, you have better powers of concentration and willpower than anyone I have ever met.What this means is that while you can learn French from this book, you are almost certain to lose interest very quickly, and thus your education in this language will come to an abrupt halt pretty sharpish. Working through the book is like treading through treacle, only less fun. It is stuck in the style of textbook which went out with flared trousers, and while other learning materials have moved on, this has not.Two stars for the CDs and the good price, but spend a bit more, and get something more useful. Try something like Bernard Grosz'  Access French: Student Book (Access Language Series)  - but make sure you get the support CDs too - or his rather handy  French (Teach Yourself Your Evening Class) . Even better (in my opinion) is Angela Aries'  Facon De Parler: French for Beginners: Pt. 1 , which is everything a modern text-book should be. Yes, it's a bit more cash, but I promise you, you won't regret the extra expense.

Having studied French a number of times in the past, but not recently, I needed a refresher so thought a book which goes through the basics and up would be a good idea. Well, I've gone through two chapters of this book and can only say that if I didn't already know a reasonable amount of French I would be incredibly confused. One problem is the lack of consistancy when dealing with the French ornothography, in French accents are optional for capital letters, even though the do affect pronunciation and meaning, so language books include them to avoid abiguity and help a student. This book includes them on some phrases but not others within the same excercise creating an inconsistancy which is confusing. Another problem is a complete lack of proper explanation of main grammar points which will likely leave a new student confused and using the wrong gender of a word for example. Some of the excercise bear no resemblance to the topic in question, for example questions about the French National Lottery in "Meeting People," which was a "simple" guess the answer from the page opposite affair. This didn't test my French at all and was confusing as I have no knowledge of the French Lottery system, how the forms are filled out, etc. The second chapter ends with a "Find the Intruder" excercise which lists six people who are in a house, you also have the six people said out loud on the cd and it moves onto the next chapter. I'm thinking, ok, there's an aunt, uncle, friend, mother, etc. Is there some story, unfortunately no there isn't. Just a list of six people. Turning to the back of the book I find the answer. The intruder in the house is the uncle because... (FANFARE) he is a man, it could just have easily been the friend as she isn't a family member or the... absolutely no point at all.Anyway, going by the first two chapters I cannot recommend this book to anyone seeking to learn the language. And if you know some French you will be even more astounded by how poorly put together it is.UPDATE: I am now up to chapter 5, something else has struct me a number of times as going through the book. I am not completely sure but the prononciation on the cds sometimes leaves something to be desired. A number of times the presenters appear to be prononcing letters which are normally silent as far as I understand. I.e. "vingT-deux" with the T heavily spoken and "tournEZ à gauche" prononced definately as an EZ as would be found in the Spanish name Mendez.

The tried and tested way of learning a language at a basic level is:a) provide an example dialog with a few new phrases and new words, along with a few notes on new grammarb) provide lots of slightly differing exercises to drill this new knowledge into your brainc) move on to some new phrases, vocab and grammarMeanwhile this book follows the pattern of:a) have an example dialog with a ton of new phrases and words, but only explaining what half of them meanb) give an arbitrary lesson on some point of grammar, only loosely related to the dialogc) ask a couple of questions to check you vaguely understood what the dialog was aboutd) move on to something entirely differentI personally liked the BBC Talk French book, I'm sure there are plenty of other good beginner French courses as well.

I will have to agree with the other reviews for this publication. Teach Yourself French is most probably the worst Teach Yourself I have come across thus far and I do not recommend it.Very little is said about pronounciation, the exercises are so easy you will not learn anything and the information is often presented in large, unfriendly chunks which gives it a very churned out, inaccessible feeling.Without repeating the other reviewers, I believe Gaelle Graham has not made a sufficient enough attempt to make it easy and understandable for her TeachYourself-ees because the material is either much too easy or too bewildering and needs a good rethink. The Norwegian and Dutch versions are excellent and carry an interesting storyline whereas this does not seem to go anywhere.Not recommend. Try the Colloquial series.