Chapter 00
You wish to learn how to read French with reasonable ease. It should be possible; people have done it. If you intend to do so using the materials on these pages, you should follow the steps detailed below.
Table of Contents
1. Begin Learning the Rules of Pronunciation
If you do not know how to pronounce French, acquire some aid that will help you to do so.
The links provided here may be of help: Recommended Sites for French Pronunciation.
Your goal should be to be able to pronounce French correctly enough that a French person will understand the words you are saying. That means, among other things, that you know when final consonants are not pronounced (usually) and when they are (occasionally), and that you know the combinations of letters that represent one simple sound (e.g., {eau, au, aux, o} all represent the sound [o]).
For a fairly detailed (perhaps too detailed) account of how you can achieve a minimally correct pronunciation of French, see the language file Pronouncing French: A Minimalist Approach.
2. Acquire This Book
Edward M. Stack.1
Reading French in the Arts and Sciences, Fourth Edition.
Houghton-Mifflin, c1987.
ISBN: 0395359686
New on Amazon it will cost you $50+ ($80?). A used copy will do fine, but it MUST BE THE FOURTH EDITION.
You may also find it useful to have a separate grammar reference book. I recommend, for its completeness, cheapness, and exercises with keys (if you want some active practice) this title:
Mary Coffmann Crocker.
Schaum’s Outline of French Grammar.
McGraw-Hill, 6th2 edition.
ISBN: 0071828982
3. Read the Introductory Matter
Read CAREFULLY the Author’s introductory matter, ppxv-xxiii.
4. Check Out the End Matter
- Appendix A: Hints. (Some parts of this will be important to learn later.)
- Appendix B: Regular Verbs. (You will need to know this matter thoroughly before long.)
- Appendix C: Irregular Verbs (Ditto to what I said about Appendix B.)
- Appendix D: Numbers (You can’t live without numbers.)
- Appendix E. (You can ignore this appendix, which is largely superseded.)
- Appendix F: False Friends. (Very important!)
- Extra tests, pp211-52 (Useful extra practice. I am not giving you keys for them, however.)
- Vocabulary. (Your goal should be to assimilate most of this vocabulary.)
5. Do the Following With Each Chapter
- In the book: Read the grammatical explanations.
- Online: Read my commentary on these explanations; study also the French Language Files these commentaries link to.
- In the book: Do the translation exercises that follow in the chapter, and the readings (readings begin in Chapter 4). Up until Chapter 5, chapters are divided into two parts. Chances are you should write (or type) out your translations.
- Online: Check your translations against mine.
A Warning about My Translations
In my translations of the exercises and the readings, in general I try to observe the rule for translating I propose for you: when a choice of, say, two translations is possible, and one is close to the French (in word choice or syntax, or both) and one is not, for our purposes it is better to choose the version closer to the French…always provided that the result is clear, idiomatic English that conveys the idea correctly.
However, honesty obliges me to say that I have not always succeeded in abiding by this rule. The instincts of the English stylist in me have sometimes been too powerful for me to resist. Consequently, when comparing your translations to mine, don’t be concerned if your wording and mine differ. The only important consideration is that the meaning should be the same.
6. Review Frequently
Even if you are not planning on writing or speaking French, you will need to do some serious memory work. You need to acquire a multi-thousand word basic vocabulary that you do not need to look up; perhaps 3000 words that are not easy cognates. You need to be able to recognize parts of speech (what’s a noun, a verb, an article, an adjective, an adverb, etc.) and the forms of verbs (tenses and personal endings), without having continually to look up such things.
Such ready recognition is the goal, and to get there you will need go over the matters covered in this course on a regular basis and recommit them to memory. In doing this review work, you may consult not only of the textbook and my commentaries, but also the French Language Files.
Passive or Active?
It is true that, in order to be able simply to read French, a passive knowledge of forms and meanings is all you need; it is also true, in theory, that a passive knowledge (= ability to recognize) is easier to attain than an active knowledge (= ability to use). However, I think it is also true that, to some degree at least, the best passive knowledge is an active knowledge.
Hence I recommend that for some things you aim at acquiring an active knowledge: for instance, the forms of the various verb tenses. Practice writing out from memory the six personal forms of a tense; practice also pronouncing these forms from memory. Then you will be less likely to hesitate when you come upon one of these forms in your reading.
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