Short Stories in French for Beginners: Read for pleasure at your level, expand your vocabulary and learn French the fun way! (Foreign Language Graded Reader Series)
£7.60£10.40 (-27%)
An unmissable collection of eight unconventional and captivating short stories for young and adult learners.
“I love Olly’s work – and you will too!” – Barbara Oakley, PhD, Author of New York Times bestseller A Mind for Numbers
Short Stories in French for Beginners has been written especially for students from beginner to intermediate level, designed to give a sense of achievement, and most importantly – enjoyment! Mapped to A2-B1 on the Common European Framework of Reference, these eight captivating stories will both entertain you, and give you a feeling of progress when reading.
What does this book give you?
· Eight stories in a variety of exciting genres, from science fiction and crime to history and thriller – making reading fun, while you learn a wide range of new vocabulary
· Controlled language at your level, including the 1000 most frequent words, to help you progress confidently
· Authentic spoken dialogues, to help you learn conversational expressions and improve your speaking ability
· Pleasure! It’s much easier to learn a new language when you’re having fun, and research shows that if you’re enjoying reading in a foreign language, you won’t experience the usual feelings of frustration – ‘It’s too hard!’ ‘I don’t understand!’
· Accessible grammar so you learn new structures naturally, in a stress-free way
Carefully curated to make learning a new language easy, these stories include key features that will support and consolidate your progress, including
· A glossary for bolded words in each text
· Full plot summary
· A bilingual word list
· Comprehension questions after each chapter.
As a result, you will be able to focus on enjoying reading, delighting in your improved range of vocabulary and grasp of the language, without ever feeling overwhelmed or frustrated. From science fiction to fantasy, to crime and thrillers, Short Stories in French for Beginners will make learning French easy and enjoyable.
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Additional information
| Publisher | Teach Yourself, Bilingual edition (4 Oct. 2018) |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Paperback | 272 pages |
| ISBN-10 | 9781473683433 |
| ISBN-13 | 978-1473683433 |
| Dimensions | 12.7 x 2.54 x 19.56 cm |
by Charles C
I got it as a gift for my teacher and she loved it!
by Sdfr
I’m learning French on an app but wanted to take it to the next level. This book is fantastic for getting a real feel for the language and makes me feel like I’ve accomplished something.
I LOVED the instructions and guidance from the author at the beginning about how to work through it.
J’adore ce livre!
by Charles C
I recently ordered a number of Olly’s books for myself and family/friends. The books arrived in very good condition and on-time.
I am greatly enjoying the Brazilian Portuguese book, using it not only for reading but for spoken practice also.
There are a couple of minor misformattings (keyword lists having the odd word in the wrong order) but nothing to disrupt the StoryLearning method. I’d definitely recommend this series to an A2 learner as a way to accelerate their learning.
One unfortunate aspect of the series is that each of the stories is the same across all beginner books – each one features the same 8 plotlines – and therefore I assume for the intermediate books also. I was hoping to use the French books following my use of the Brazilian Portuguese one, however I won’t be able to engage with them in quite the same way as I will unavoidably remember each of their twists and turns.
by Neil
It is a good book, but it might be helpful if the description gave a minimum age range to clarify “For beginners”.
I bought them for primary school leavers ahead of their move to secondary French, but the books were more GCSE level.
Thank you.
by LadyLouisa
As mentioned by only one other reviewer – I’m suspicious of this – the trumpeted glossary is not good. Odd selection of items, in which difficult constructions hard to fully appreciate for non-French speakers are left out, but single words that any beginner would already know are listed. A few of the bold words have no translation, as has been said or, Irritatingly, the context often is not translated with the correct tense, nor with the correct English language nuance. I don’t know about the naturalness of the French, but the English is often slightly misleading or doesn’t take account of the context of that instance of the word. ‘Se rendre compte’ is a French expression meaning ‘to realise’ but sometimes in certain contexts that translation doesn’t work in English, and anyway the word ‘realise’ has two meanings in English. I therefore spent quite some time researching the expression under its component parts in various larger and larger dictionaries, which I had to buy, before I really learnt the phrase or trusted it. So the whole context learning effect of learning from stories has misfired. This book doesn’t make it much easier for you.
Repetitions are used, but not in a way which would teach you the meaning, although if you want something drilled into you, you’ll probably be satisfied. For instance, the narrator tells us that they arrive in the suburbs of the city, where there are lots of parks and they can have a barbecue, and one character then asks where they are and the main character says “We are in the suburbs of the city where there are…… ” etc. you get the idea. Naturally I had to look quite a lot of that up in my dictionaries.
Finally, some of the stories are quite good, the first and last ones particularly, but you are also going to learn a lot of useless vocabulary about pirates and being invisible and time travel and a monstrous fierce beast and science fiction etc. And for learners, couldn’t we be protected from the past historic? I know it’s a French thing in stories, but we’re mostly reading to learn conversational French and the Past historic most certainly is only used in writing.
by Anthony Buckley
All the stories are interesting and most of all will improve your reading & understanding skills. The way the book is laid out on the kindle format are particularly good. If there’s a word you are unsure of, you just click the word & it tells you (not in the normal translate app).
by Smaranda
Been studying French on line and needed that something extra
Perfect
Addresses my elementary level with ease
Thoroughly recommend
by PR
The learning format was great. There are links and vocabularies for new words.
A very good learning book.