Vis-à-vis: Beginning French (Student Edition)

I have many French books, but this one seems to be more focus on the pratical side of speaking French more rapidily than the other ones. It has taken my French to a higher level in a short period of time!

Actually, our daughter took 4 years of French in HS and she is now taking French in her 3rd year of college. It should be an easy 'A', but she admits to having forgot some of it. She has a marvelous accent though. Nice to have this available on Amazon and book is good for two semesters. Yes!

Discounted text books are great when you want to study/learn something. Who cares if it's last year's addition? It's not like all the information is suddenly completely out of date.

Since this a course for college, most teachers require a access code to do course study on line (I don't why but maybe they are are more lazy then before. This didn't come with a code access number. I assumed that since it was new edition that that would be a standard package or at least tell me that it's not include. So we had to buy a code from the book store. Didn't save any money with this purchase. The book is fine but just not everything I expected.

First of all I want to start off saying that I really enjoyed this book. The book makes learning French very easy and hands on. Every chapter discusses a different topic. Some of the chapters discuss food, others holidays, and some sports. Giving every chapter a different theme helps you to be able to really learn the material. You are not getting words mixed up as much because you know they belong to a certain theme and it is all categorized.This book gives a lot of scenarios and pictures allowing you to visualize and really understand how and where you would use different French terms. Other textbooks tend to be very wordy and you can get lost in all of the reading. Vis-à-vis makes sure it is all broken down. They give you the endings and conjugations at the beginning of the chapter and then the vocabulary words throughout with a complete list at the end. In my class my Professor would assign different exercises from the book and then we would come in and review them the next day. Every exercise helps to strengthen different areas of your French. Some exercises focus on vocabulary and others focus on grammar. French can be a very confusing language to learn but with the pictures of different scenarios and conversations that show the variation you were able to get a better grasp on how to use the language.Another smart feature of this book is that it gives you passages to read. It is good to be able to see how full sentences and paragraphs are formed and it is good practice to read the passages out loud to try and perfect your pronunciation. Also reading is a good way to understand the language.If you are going to use this textbook I would recommend also purchasing Centro with it. Centro is an online workbook that allows you to go through worksheets and see what you got wrong and what you should have used instead. Centro also has a lot of recordings so you can listen to the proper pronunciation of words and sentences and what different sounds come from using different accents. I would recommend looking into getting Centro because it enhances the features of this book. This version of the textbook from Amazon does NOT include Centro.My experience with this book was a good one. I was able to read and understand the material by how straight forward and simple the textbook made it. I think this is a wonderful book for beginning French language learners. Although I took my French class last year, I have kept the book so that I may use it to go back and look at some of the endings or grammar rules I have forgotten. I am happy I made this purchase and I believe it was a good investment.

I love this text book because it gives you not only the formal and informal way of speaking to strangers but, it also teaches you how to talk with your friends by providing you with the most up-to-date "slang".

If you were to purchase this book at your college bookstore it would include the code but on here it DOES NOT INCLUDE THE CODE. So make sure you're getting a good deal. For me it was more expensive buying the book here and the code from my college. Other than that the book is what it is but they should specify that it does not include the QUIA code like the regular book stores do. The description is deceiving because it talks about online resources so I was under the impression it meant QUIA.

Basic French text. Overly large pages and sheer weight make it difficult to bring to class!