French for Reading

Recently, I picked up a copy of L'Etranger by Albert Camus at a bargain basement price. I had been looking for a while to revisit some of the works I had read and enjoyed as an undergrad, so this seemed like a great opportunity. But I have to admit that, although I remembered this classic as a fairly easy and enjoyable read, I struggled with every single sentence of the book.A little background: in college, one of my majors had been Philosophy. In my senior year, my thesis paper explored the moral and religious philosophy of Heidegger and Wittgenstein. So, naturally, I thought that the fact that I couldn't understand even a word of Camus meant that he was a fabulously accomplished and meaningful scholar. Plainly, this was a work of unbridled genius.Then my girlfriend pointed out that the book was printed in the native French.Oh.Wow.I had taken French in high school and I thought I had retained a decent command of the language. Not only could I order at a French restaurant even if the menu didn't have actual pictures of snails, but I had been to France, though many years ago, so I knew I shared a lot with its people. For instance, I find working a forty-hour week really, really challenging. I think Jerry Lewis is a genius. I light other people's cigarettes. I dump fruit in the street to protest things. Riding a bicycle wearing a phallic helmet and skin-tight, junk-emphasizing lycra shorts strikes me as a manly, ruthlessly competitive sport. Hey, once, I even dated a French girl. At least I think she was French. She might have been Canadian. Or a Wisconsinite. I'm not even all that sure she was a girl anymore.Anyway, I could no longer understand written French.This wonderful book changed that.French for Reading is divided into 21 chapters that take you through all you need to know to competently read French. If you are diligent and if this is a refresher for you as it was for me, you can finish the entire book in three weeks, tackling one chapter each day. If you are new to French or don't have the time or inclination to forgo several weeks of half-priced martinis during happy hour -- drunken hours you will never, ever get back -- so you can read existential novels, plan for a couple of months of leisurely, enjoyable study at a pace that works for you and your barkeep.The first chapter is about cognates, which are words that look like English and have similar meanings. It also covers false cognates, which sound English but are just posers, kind of like Madonna. By the time you finish chapter one, you will think that the study of French is easy. But this first chapter is merely a French tickler. Every remaining inch of this thick book is devoted to grammar, sentence structure, vocabulary, forms, and idioms. Much of the instruction is unstructured and imperceptible: that is, for instance, you never really get explicit lessons in sentence structure but these are incorporated seamlessly into other teaching. Similarly, vocabulary is scattered throughout the book in lessons about other topics. Though this method may not be for everyone, it made the entire learning process feel natural and less like memorization to me. It also means that you need to read every word, complete every exercise, and pay attention throughout your study or you will skim something that much later turns out to be important. Throughout the book are tiny pebbles of information that you may at first mistake for shiny gravel or shattered glass, but they are gemstones that together form an intricate rhinestone tiara of language. Or something. You know. Pay attention.By the end of chapter seventeen, you will be able to competently read French with the aid of a good dictionary, but you should battle through the remaining chapters, which deal not only with idioms and expressions of time but also contain valuable instruction on subjects like possessive pronouns, indefinite expressions, and the use of chez and que. At the end of the book are readings that will, by this time, seem surprisingly easy, as well as a list of all the vocabulary you learned throughout your study, for the most part without realizing it. You are now ready to read Le Petit Prince.I should mention some caveats. First, this book is not a booty call. It is a fairly intense study of written French. You can't just say to yourself, "Well, I haven't looked at this book for two weeks but now I'm horny for a little French so I'll crack it open." No, you must romance this book, pay attention to it each and every day, make it feel like it's the only book you're reading. If you leave it alone for a week or two, you will forget what you have learned and the book will find someone else who is serious about learning a language. It's that French.Second, this book is devoted entirely to reading. You will learn absolutely no pronunciation from your study. You will not be able to hold a decent spoken conversation in French. You will likely feel comfortable writing simple sentences in French after some practice, but pronunciation in French is critical to speaking it. The difference between speaking French and reading it is the difference between chicken and tastes-like-chicken at a Saigon food cart, if you know what I mean. I am planning a trip to France this summer and, just in case, I am going to have cards that say, in French, "I am deaf. Write it out or just go ahead and mime it." This may save me a great deal of embarrassment. Plan for quite a bit of additional study and practice if you need to know how to pronounce what you read.Finally, you will have a decent grounding in French when you finish with this book, but pick up something else to read simultaneously after chapter seventeen. Fluency will come only with practice and you will need to build your vocabulary. After I finished L'Etranger I picked up Sartre's La Nausee and Voltaire's Candide ou l'Optimisme to keep up the momentum. Also, splurge on a great dictionary and a book of French verbs. French for Reading is your first spouse. It's really just a practice run.I highly recommend this book for those wishing to read French, whether it's to benefit you professionally or academically, or simply to enrich your personal life by making you look worldly when you read French stuff and sip café au lait on the train on your way to work. Vivre l'instant présent!

Over several decades I have made several failed attempts to teach myself to read French. This time I was determined to be successful, so I searched Amazon and found "French for Reading".Here’s why I so highly recommend this book:The system of having the French in one column and the English translation in the adjacent (covered) column is a simple but effective method for self-study.The book is dedicated to one thing and only one thing: teaching reading comprehension.The exercises progress in difficulty in a gradual manner that covers the material fairly thoroughly. As you move to the next exercise you are not left clueless because an important grammatical construction has been omitted.The readings are interesting and sometimes a bit obscure. Although the selections might not be to everyone’s taste, they appeal to my inner science nerd. Read about everything from cats in space to the science of cloud formation.Includes a short dictionary of useful words, a list of false cognates, and a table of verb tenses .Room for Improvement:The font size is quite small and the layout is crowded.I wish that the book were available in Kindle format (however the self-study system might be a challenge to the e-book format).An answer key containing the complete translation of the chapter text passages would be a very helpful.The coverage of key grammatical topics of special relevance to translators could be a bit more comprehensive. "Reading French in the Arts and Sciences" (4th edition/Stack) does a better job in this area.Sometimes the English translations have small grammatical errors that should have been caught during the editing process. More often, the translated quiz answers are just rather awkward and dated.Addition Suggestions for Use:Although this book is geared towards graduate students (especially those in the sciences) preparing for reading competency exams, it is appropriate for the general reader as well.Get a good French-English dictionary (Oxford-Hachette is built into both Mac OSX and iOS, and Kindle readers) and an additional grammar review reference (such as Schaum’s or Barron’s).Be prepared to work almost every day. Follow the instructions with dedication: circle the unknown words and the iffy grammatical constructions and review them before moving on.When I find that I cannot confidently translate the text passage, I copy the difficult sentences and work on them until I can produce a semblance of standard English. For working out the first translation draft, I’ve found that the translation tool embedded in the recent version of Microsoft Word (I’m using Version 16 on a Mac) is actually quite useful.Closing Remarks:After a month’s study, I’m about half-way through this book. My (unaided) reading comprehension has improved significantly: Although I’m not ready for the obscure existentialist novel still gathering dust on the bookshelf, I can read Wiki pages and simple articles in a familiar field without great difficulty.I cannot recommend this book highly enough if you want to learn to read French.

Research interests meant that I needed to acquire an advanced level of reading knowledge of French. Finding a suitable textbook was a major problem. Most textbooks cater primarily for children or tourists, emphasizing conversational skills, and tend to follow a mind-numbingly tedious narrative format, no doubt designed to lend the material some superficial interest, rather than the kind of functional, key grammar-oriented, plan, supplemented by passages of literary and scholarly French, that I was looking for. This book was perfect. I had almost no previous knowledge of French, but now, after just a few months of not very intensive study, I can read Montesquieu, Rousseau and Voltaire without difficulty in the original French. I would recommend this book to anybody with similar objectives. I would, however, point out that if you wish to acquire speaking or aural comprehension skills, you should supplement this book with another course.

I can't believe that actually someone did write this book. This is the book I want I really like it and I really recommend to other guys!!!!!

この本は値段が値段だけに、買うのに躊躇したが、その値段の高さに誘われて購入。結果は値段の割にはといった感じ。テクストにはわりと最初のうちにルソーなど出てきたりするのだけれど、その解説に難あり。まずワンセンテンスもしくはフレーズで、原文に対して、英文訳が書かれたgridを一つ一つ覚えて、それから全文を読むというこれならパラテクストでいいんじゃないのかといったレイアウト。そのために無駄にスペースを割きすぎて、この分厚さになっている。文法の解説に重きを置いていないところが大きくマイナス。読めた気にさせる本。