Easy French Step-By-Step: Master High-Frequency Grammar for French Proficiency--Fast

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: [[ASIN:0743550420 French, Conversational: Learn to Speak and Understand French with Pimsleur Language Programs]]
[[ASIN:0071744142 The Ultimate French Review and Practice]]

Great for written language,

BUT Schaum's French Grammar is still cheaper, includes verbs & I feel I get the same stuff out of it.

Plus Schaum's does not use absolutely horrible Americanized pronunciation like Easy French does.

This does have a pronunciation section, but I would say a lot of it is honestly HARMFUL to your pronunciation.

For example, "I with a little n" is how they describe pronouncing "un." They do mention it is a nasal vowel, but pronouncing un like ih(n) or ee(n) which is the only possible thing I can see coming out of "i", is NOT what you want, especially if you are just starting out.

I do like it for grammar, but I'm not a fan of the brand (McGraw Hill).
It is far better than their "Ultimate" French Review(/ Verb Review). It is more concise, easier, does not feel like a tome like Ultimate Review does, & it is better even though Easy French does not have a CD like Ultimate Review.

All of these (McGraw Hill) books suck for pronunciation. Some of it is okay, but most will not help you.

You can use forvo.com / rhinospike.com for free pronunciation recordings.

Plus I feel like CDs that come in some books are INSANELY fast for a beginner.

For pronunciation, it is far better to get a "speaking" book like:

1. See it & Say it in French

&/ 2. The Berlitz Self-Teacher French

You certainly do not need both, but speaking/PRONUNCIATION practice is key to remembering a language. I find them both extremely helpful.

The book explains the grammar simply and has a variety of exercises for practice. It also introduces a lot of new vocabulary. The only issue I have with the book is that there is not phonetic pronunciation key to accompany the vocabulary words. I have no idea whether or not I am pronouncing a word correctly. An accompanying CD would have been nice, without it the book should at least provide a guide for each word.

Folks, don't believe the Rosetta Stone's out there! The truth is, NOBODY really "learns" language naturally except for children. It is possible to learn French just by spending $15 dollars on this book and another $10 on a French-English dictionary- I suggest a pocket Collins French School Dictionary on-the-go. The best way to learn any language properly is through GRAMMAR. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but you cannot learn any language without hard work.

This book actually teaches you French through reading, writing, and speaking. You need to actually WORK HARD though to learn.

Strengths:
-Lots of original exercise in the book to constantly practice what you learned
-Explains grammar in easy in fun ways
-You truly do learn step by step, and apply what you learn to new rules one step at a time
-Your brain won't explode with too much information since you can effortlessly do at least a chapter a week, which means 16 chapters in 16 weeks. So 16 weeks and French is yours! Or if you want you can do 2-3 chapters a week, so 4-8 weeks and French is yours.

Weaknesses:
-You need to use a French-English dictionary to support the learning materials in this book when you forget words
-You cannot learn any language "Fast" as the title of the book says, unless you call 4-16 weeks "fast." The time it takes for you to learn French will depend on how good you are with language and how much time you are willing to spend.

Still, I think this book is worth the buy.

This is a great book! Yes, you will learn French up to an intermediate level if you complete the book. It builds upon itself with each lesson and new chapter. I just don't understand the negative reviews. You need to give the book a chance. Each Chapter has constant reviewed words in it and difference breaks for vocabullary study. I highly recommend it!

If you are dedicated to learning French, use a notebook, and use Google Translate(or another source) for checking your pronouncation.... you will be a pro. I also recommend using your notebook to write regular sentences and conversation that you use and hear every day and then practice translating them and speaking them in French. Challenge yourself.... ask yourself questions in French. YOU WILL LEARN FRENCH AND BE ABLE TO PARTICIPATE IN CONVERSATION. You have to try to succeed. It really is not that hard. Good luck.

A great book to get you started with French. Learn the vocabulary and grammar and then go for some reading practice, eg. with [[ASIN:1452845743 A B C Petits Contes (French Edition)]] and [[ASIN:1452847266 Nouveaux Contes de Fées pour les Petits Enfants: Fairy Tales in French (French Edition)]].

It doesn't come with an audio CD, but it is a very friendly book that will help you to understand the basic about grammar.
Also have a lot of exercises to practice (writting).
I recommen this book to people who starts learning French, it is gonna be very helpfull!
I'm starting with my French classes, and I am complementing pretty well my class with the explanation that gives this book.
The price is economic for a book that really helps.

I took French in HS for 2 years and now, 20 years later, have been working on an app for 4 months. I was surprised at how well I remembered! But, I get confused sometimes on some of the rules, so thought I would get this book to brush me up, teach me some new things, and if anything, breeze through the first few chapters and feel good about how much I do know. Ummm - NO. This book, expects people to already know a ton of French, and yet know nothing as a beginner. For example, the first chapter is about nouns and their articles (the, a) and plurals. Good at explaining how they work, but then in the exercise area, you are to fill in definitions of nouns that aren't even introduced in the chapter. And for some reason, they are stupid nouns that no beginner or tourist needs to know (I.e "realism"). I spent more time looking up definitions online than I did reading the whole chapter. How do they expect you to know nouns before they even use them? This book is neither helpful, interesting or encouraging - I would strongly recommend against it for anyone in the beginner/intermediate stage. And yet, I wouldn't recommend it for advanced learners as it is all about the basics of grammar, which they would already know. So, I guess I recommend this book to no one. If I hadn't already written in it, it would be going back tout de suite!!

This book is cheap and the first chapter is okay. But I just started chapter two and I can tell already this isn't going to work. There is no cohesive quality. Information like nouns, prepositions and rules for French syntax are just thrown around. Yes, the book does offer the information in a step by step method, but nouns are all over the place making it difficult to reference them if you've forgotten a few. The author then will give exercises asking for information that hasn't been presented. Wake the F up, you can't do that to someone trying to learn. Mrs. Rochester does that all the time, at least once or twice for each exercise. Some exercises demand answers that have prepositional phrases in them, when the fracking book HAS NOT even introduced the prepositions. Instead they sometimes offer little hints for the preposition in the exercise itself - wake up, that is not how you teach someone the rule for a preposition, especially when they seem to be shifting every time so that once I think I learn a prepositional pattern it changes in the next question for the same fracking exercise. It's quite frustrating and I'm already convinced that I must trade this book in for a more expensive text. I'm not saying the money always denotes quality, but when it comes to learning a subject, especially language I think the author creates a good text when they know they will get compensation. I've taken Latin before and the text was so high quality for around forty quid, while Mrs. Rochester's text runs less than half that. I need to do some more searching. I need a text that organizes its nouns, verbs, prepositions and other atoms of sentence. Then I need to make sure that the information is presented before there is a question for said information.

This is not a book for the beginner, but for someone who studied French years ago in school and now wants to a refresher. The title says plainly that this is a grammar book, not a "Learning French" book; vocabulary is a distant second.

But learning the grammar of a foreign language requires numerous examples of each rule in order to truly comprehend the rule, and abundant repetitious exercises for the student to internalize each rule. This book does not have a sufficient amount of either for someone just learning French.

So, it is not a bad book, it is just not a book for a beginner learning French on his or her own.