The Ultimate French Review and Practice
- ISBN13: 9780071451642
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
Product Description
Combining the critically acclaimed features of the bestselling Ultimate Review and Practice grammar guides with the convenience and skill-building advantages of audio learning, The Ultimate French Review and Practice is perfect for advanced-beginning to intermediate-level French learners on the move. Now you can fine-tune your mastery of French grammar whenever and wherever you choose–while traveling, exercising, running errands, or even cleaning the house! It f… More >>
The Ultimate French Review and Practice
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T. Griffin said :
March 10, 2010 at 5:34 am
I have the ultimate french review and practice book and I do think that it is useful, practical and comprehensive (for a review). I was wondering if anyone bought the CD set? How are they different, if at all?
The star rating is for the book edition.
Update: I ended up buying the CD edition and found it a wonderful complement to the book. It has comprehensive verbal/aural lessons that reflect real sentences. It is beyond the beginner level, however. It feels like listening and dictation that I would have taken in class. I would not recommend them for the car unless you are not driving. They take too much concentration. The star rating stays the same.
Rating: 4 / 5
Riled said :
March 10, 2010 at 6:50 am
I thought I had ordered the ULTIMATE FRENCH REVIEW AND PRACTICE book but what came was the audio disc set. I tried to contact the seller but there was no address or phone number and the AMAZON website provided no help.
I am now stuck with discs that I do not want and bought a book from another source.
H. W. Ryals
Rating: 1 / 5
SA79 said :
March 10, 2010 at 7:10 am
I started learning French in grade school and stopped midway through high school, more than ten years ago now. Since then my French slowly began to disappear. Eager to regain my proficiency in this most beautiful language, I picked up this CD course, and was pleasantly surprised to find that I could understand a good portion of it from the first listen. However, for beginners, the vocabulary, sentence structure and speaking manner may be too advanced. As previous reviewers noted, the dictations are often hard to understand and spoken words frequently blend too quickly into each other to be comprehensible. Also, the sound quality is plainly poor and there usually isn’t enough time to answer the dication question before the speaker says the right answer. However, the actual grammatical instruction is of very high quality and the CD can be recommended on those grounds.
Two caveats before buying — many of the situations given as dictation examples seem aimed at high school students (issues discussed include teachers, homework, parents, crushes, etc.). Very boring if you’re like me and well past that age. Also, much of the content is surprisingly negative in tone. Listen to the whole thing and it might well ruin your mood for the day! How much can a person hear about parents being upset with their kids, teachers upset with students, etc., while being asked to phase sentences in negative terms, tell people they’re incorrect about this or that… These authors really should’ve lightened up a little.
Rating: 3 / 5
Charles F. Thomas said :
March 10, 2010 at 8:40 am
The books in this series are quite excellent, but I was very disappointed in this audio CD. The exercises are fine (albeit too fast-paced for anyone but a real expert), and do indeed poke into some excellent grammar points that are not typically covered even in a fourth-semester college French class.
My issue is with the audio quality. It’s clear that the producers of this CD merely took a VERY BAD cassette version of this course and made a CD from it without doing any processing at all. The tape hiss dominates the tracks, and as a result it is often quite difficult to hear what the people are saying during the exercises. When you’re dealing with a second language, it’s imperative that you are able to distinguish between the words, and in many cases that’s simply impossible here.
I’d give this 4+ stars for content, but 2 or less for the audio issues.
Rating: 3 / 5
Corran Horn said :
March 10, 2010 at 9:24 am
This is a wonderfully priced grammar review. It is not quite as polished (there are a few typos) as the second book by these two authors, “Ultimate Verb Review,” but it is pretty good. It covers nouns, verbs, conjunctions, pronouns, basically everything you need to practice your French. I would suggest it as a good way to recall the French you’ve lost since high school, or as a good supplement to a college level course. You should also get the “Ultimate Verb Review” which treats French verbs in an even more thorough manner.
Rating: 5 / 5