French Book

I'm currently going through this book as I self-study French. I took three years of French in middle school and high school about ten years ago, and I've found this book to be a great grammar refresher. English and French are similar in a lot of ways (English was hugely impacted by Norman French from the Norman occupation of England, after all). This book directly compares grammatical concepts of each language, using English as a jumping off point, which I think works extremely well. Clunky academic terms for grammatical concepts are necessary to fully understand the grammar of any language, and this book serves as a great crash course for those who have forgotten most of high school English class. It explains what sort of familiar grammar works or doesn't work in French, and it has example sentences to show the grammar in action.

The book is more of a reference book, meant to be read in any order as needed, rather than intended as a straight read. The chapters are not necessarily ordered by difficulty (see contents below). It's also a little dry to read through several chapters at once, but perfectly serviceable when used as a reference.

Here are the contents of this book:

Introduction
1. What is a Noun?
2. What is Meant by Gender?
3. What is Meant by Number?
4. What are Articles?
-Definite Articles
-Indefinite Articles
-Partitive Articles
5. What is the Possessive?
6. What is a Verb?
7. What is an Infinitive?
8. What are Auxiliary Verbs?
9. What is a Subject?
10. What is a Pronoun?
11. What is a Subject Pronoun?
12. What is a Verb Conjugation?
13. What are Affirmative and Negative Sentences?
14. What are Declarative and Interrogative Sentences?
15. What is Meant by Mood?
16. What is Meant by Tense?
17. What is the Present Tense?
18. What is the Imperative?
19. What is a Participle?
-Present Participle
-Past Participle
20. What is the Past Tense?
-Present Perfect(passé composé)
-Imperfect (imparfait)
-Selection of the passé composé or the imparfait
21. What is the Past Perfect Tense?
22. What is the Future Tense?
-Immediate Future
23. What is the Future Perfect Tense?
24. What is the Conditional?
-Present Conditional
-Past Conditional
-Sequence of Tenses
25. What is a Reflexive Verb?
26. What is Meant by Active and Passive Voice?
-Changing an Active Sentence to a Passive Sentence
-Avoiding the Passive Voice in French
27. What is the Subjunctive?
28. What is an Adjective?
29. What is a Descriptive Adjective?
30. What is a Possessive Adjective?
-Singular Possessor: my, your, his, her, its
-Plural Possessor: our, your, their
31. What is an Interrogative Adjective?
32. What is a Demonstrative Adjective?
33. What is Meant by Comparison of Adjectives?
-Comparative
-Superlative
34. What is an Adverb?
35. What is a Conjunction?
36. What is a Preposition?
37. What are Objects?
-Direct Object
-Indirect Object
-Object of a Preposition
What is an Object Pronoun?
-Direct Object Pronouns
-Indirect Object Pronouns
-Pronouns as Objects of a Preposition
-Disjunctive (Stressed) Pronouns
39. What is an Interrogative Pronoun?
-Subject
-Direct Object
-Indirect Object and Object of a Preposition
-"Which One, which ones"
40. What is a Possessive Pronoun?
-Singular Possessor: mine, yours, his, hers, its
-Plural Possessor: ours, yours, theirs
41. What is a Relative Pronoun?
-Subject of the Relative Clause
-Direct Object of the Relative Clause
-Indirect Object and Object of a Preposition in a Relative Clause
-Possessive Modifier "whose"
-Relative Pronouns without Antecedents
42. What is a Demonstrative Pronoun?
-"This one, that one" and "these, those"
-"The one, the ones" (celui qui)
-Celui de to Show Possession
Answer Key
Index