French for Reading

I purchased this book for the purpose of passing the language reading requirement for my graduate program. I am using it in conjunction with taking an accelerated summer French for reading course, and have found it very helpful. The review exercises and reading passages are interesting, while the explanations are generally clear. The only two things is first I might fault it for is some odd choices in arranging the chapters, but if you skip ahead it really doesn't matter. Second, a verb chart with regular and irregular verbs and their conjugations would have been nice, but the internet and a really good dictionary can take care of that, too.

Great book for learning to read French. I had some basic French, and have found this book is a great tutor. There are loads of examples to read for each grammar point and new vocab. It starts using lots of words that are almost the same in French and English which gets you going fast. The style is to facilitate learning - it is printed in a column with the translation the next line down so you can read it with a card covering the next line, then check as you go. I wish there was a good equivalent for spoken French. The only problem is that it is very dated - reads like something from the 1950s - so its not much good for examples of informally written French. Its examples are largely based around working toward reading extracts from very formal (often academic) writing. It is expensive for the size of it and very average production quality, but after using it I found it good value for money because of its content.

I borrowed this book from the local library and read about half of it, before ordering it from Amazon. It arrived yesterday. Like all the other reviewers, I love the book.

I had read Louise Selbert's excellent "Skills & Techniques for Reading French" earlier, and found Sandberg's book a good complement.

Sandberg's approach is very different from Selbert's.
Sandberg's book addresses graduate students who need to quickly acquire a reading knowledge of French to pass a language exam. I'm not a student, nor do I have to take exams. But I found the book helpful in enhancing my French reading skills. It uses a programmed approach. Instead of detailed exposition of a topic, it first gives tiny snippets of grammar & vocabulary, followed by short sentences in small exercises to illustrate the topics. These sentences are taken from long passages that appear later at the end of the chapter. By the time you get to these entire passages towards the chapter end, you would have virtually covered all the component sentences earlier via the small exercises earlier. This is the format of Sandberg's programmed methodology. And it works! My French proficiency is intermediate. I found my French reading ability moving a notch up, even having completed so far only slightly more than half of the book.

As other reviewers have noted, the book's price may deter some. For me, however, it is value for money. While some of the passages are pre-war, they are well chosen in terms of subject matter, depth and style.

I recommend it highly.

Although I also attended a class that met a few hours a week, we relied heavily on this book. All I can say is that by the end of 6 weeks, I could read French not only well enough to pass the language exam in my doctoral program, but I could actually read French -- pick up an article in French and understand most of it (had to look up some words in the dictionary).

I've now returned to the book for a refresher (after being away from reading French for several years now) and find it equally useful. It's all coming back to me!

People who know French may criticize the structure, but it's hard to get around the fact that for someone who needs to pass a reading exam and be able to read French articles, this is a quick and easy way to do it.

This book has a number of very serious problems that impede language learning. First, the language is not presented in a coherent fashion (e.g. concepts are introduced in exercises but not explained until several chapters later). Second, typographical errors abound in some very unfortunate places. Several chapters include illustrative examples with accompanying translations that are incorrect, thereby confusing the student. Third, the exercises are repetitive to the point that very little is accomplished in a given chapter in terms of developing a student's vocabulary and ability to handle real French. Finally, the five-page-long appendix falls far short of the reference needs of the average user of this book. The table of verbs is hard to follow and incomplete, and there are no accompanying tables of adjectives, comparatives, etc. My advice is to buy a different book.