Easy French Reader: A Three-part Text for Beginning Students (Easy Reader Series)

This is an excellent book for a beginner who wishes to go beyond the typical phrase book/audio materials. The way this book is written; the reader, even with a very basic knowledge in French, can understand, get the general idea and relate to the stories and facts presented. The sentences and phrases used in the book, particularly in the first sections (Julie and Marc in Paris), are constructed in an easy to understand manner. They, in a clever way, avoid the use of more complex grammatical features. Only a very basic French grammar would be required to read this book. The entertaining feature of the book combined with its straight forward sentence structure encourages the learner to read further and construct new knowledge and understanding in French.

I wish this book was available when I was first learning French at school many years ago. It provides excellent consolidation for those with a basic knowledge of French, increasing vocabulary and expressions, without the additional complication of too many tenses. The questions at the end of each section (with example annswers at the back of the book) are well worth spending time on, as they really do help check correct understanding. My only criticism, and this is minor, is that I felt some additional "on page translations" would have been useful, but a decent dictionary rectifies this. The content, including an abbreviated review of French history makes it eminently readable