French for Reading Knowledge, 2nd Edition

by Joseph Palmeri, E.E. Milligan

French for Reading Knowledge, 2nd Edition

Genres: France, Nonfiction, Textbooks

310 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1969

Reviews

[James Payne · Rating 3 out of 5]

Many of the selected quotes are misogynistic, making this book not only a great entry into the French language, but to the French culture as well.

[Logan Prettyman · Rating 4 out of 5]

C’est un excellent livre. Je ne savais pas que je pouvais appendre français si vite. Pourtant il est trop exercices et vocabulaire répété. Merci, Palmeri et Milligan.

[Shane Williamson · Rating 4 out of 5]

2025 reads: 17

A helpful introduction to French for reading. Eases the English speaker into the language. Hundreds of exercises that increase in difficulty. Equally as many vocabulary words. I didn't go through every translation exercise but each and every lesson was useful and slowly built on the knowledge gained from prior lessons. There's practically no need for an instructor with this book—so long as one is not really interested in speaking the language. Il me suffit!

[Read for French comprehension with Dr Plummer at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary]

[Reading Through the Lists · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lots of content, though not always very well organized. The exercises provided a lot of practice for the concepts.

[Nicholas Abraham · Rating 4 out of 5]

I used this book to gain a reading knowledge of French for PhD requirements. I found it quite helpful, although I had French in high school and in college. The exercises and lessons are adequate.

[Kristopher · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a fairly nice text for learning how to read in French. The book focuses on cognates (at least in the early portion of the text), and introduces helpful "basic" vocabulary with each lesson. The basic vocab section, however, is very short and picks up on turns-of-phrase that you will likely find in your readings rather than every-day nouns. The book has detailed and excellent appendices that help with the more subtle issues in grammar.
The exercises have you translating actual passages from the likes of Rousseau, Pascal, and Rouchefoucault (among others), which is nice and decidedly genuine--a nice change from the standard "see Jane run" of so many language texts.
I am read this for a class, but I could see how a motivated individual could pick this up on her own and work through it, ending with a proficiency in the written language.
My only misgiving about the book is that the grammar points are less explained than they are demonstrated by the passages that you are to translate. While this has value in that you have to work at figuring out just what the rule is, if you are working on your own to learn to read French, you are in for a bit of a struggle.

[Greg · Rating 2 out of 5]

It is what it is. I guess it will teach you enough French to not realize that Baudelaire is talking about a black girl.

[Trey Kennedy · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a decent French textbook. I’ve seen better.