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ranked #102,752 most helpful out of 571,544,897 reviews
★★★★★
Excellent for WRITTEN Fluency!
I really stress the word WRITTEN fluency in recommending this book and NOT for VERBAL fluency. You will have to get Cd's like Pimsleur in order to grasp the basic PHONETICS of French. Easy French, an oxymoron if I ever heard one, was a great buy. I am pretty methodical and went through the chapters one by one and will be finishing the final chapter soon. I got it in February of 2013. It is now the end of August and I can chat with my French friend on Whatsapp! I still make a lot of mistakes and she corrects me all the time, but she was shocked at how much I learned from just one book. So that should tell you something. However, I still have a hard time understanding French verbally. I have now finished Pimsleur French 1: sample size that was around 55$. With the knowledge I received from Easy French, coupled with a sample of Pimsleur really increased my verbal fluency. When I was depending on what I learned from Easy French, I would still struggle with phonetic French. Because of the great increase in my understanding of verbal French from the Pimsleur sample, I will buy the whole pack. But you have to understand that you have to couple Pimsleur with Easy French. There is NO WAY I would have breezed through the Pimsleur sample without having done the Easy French exercises first .Together they make a great combo! If you have a talent to pick up languages by ear, then I recommend you go through the Pimsleur French first and Easy French second. If you are like me, in which I do not pick up a language by ear and I am more fluent in the written language even in English and just learn better through grammar exercises, then do the Easy French first, complete it and then go to Pimsleur. I have always had french classes in my youth and somehow I retained a lot of the basic grammar, which helped in the easy way I swept through the first couple of chapters in Easy French. A big chunk of the chapters are dedicated to the present tense conjugations and a lot of introductions to many verbs and their conjugations. When they titled this book: STEP BY STEP, they really meant it. Which is great for beginners. I used IPHONE translator when I needed to know better pronunciations/meanings. The later chapters then give you the conjugations of the two past tenses, then future, conditional, past conditional, and finally the subjunctive. The in-between chapters deal with negatives, question set ups, reflexive verbs, use of prepositions etc. Each chapter ends with a list of nouns/adjectives and a small article written in the tense you just learned in that chapter, as well as follow-up exercises for your comprehension. If you have no idea where to start in order to start the process of learning the ever so difficult French language then look no further than Easy French Step-by Step for Written Fluency. Follow it up with Pimsleur French 1, 2, and 3 for Verbal Fluency. For further written fluency, The Ultimate French Review and Practice is a great way to keep increasing your knowledge. I also bought this and I already love it. It has an interactive CD where it has a diagnostic test, more exercises and verbal comprehension. Click on the links to direct you the additional material I bought and recommend with Easy French: French, Conversational: Learn to Speak and Understand French with Pimsleur Language Programs The Ultimate French Review and Practice
August 2013 · Books · verified purchase
the product in question
Easy French Step-By-Step: Master High-Frequency Grammar for French Proficiency--Fast
4.5★ · 2,748 ratings, as of 2023
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