Reviews for French in action

The average rating for French in action based on 2 reviews is 5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2020-03-26 00:00:00 Kraig Ogden Yale University Prof. Pierre Capretz understood that language learning requires an immersion experience. As the introduction to French in Action explains, French is not a translation of English. It is a language unto itself, and therefore must be understood in its own context. Consequently, not a word of English is spoken during the dialogues or during Capretz’s entertaining commentary about them. Meta language learning, or learning about a language instead of learning a language itself, may be of interest to academic linguists, but it fails the reality test. When it comes to foreign languages, what really matters is the ability to understand and communicate. Sitting in front of a classroom of English-speaking students, Capretz invites them to invent a story about a French student (Mireille) and an American tourist (Robert). (“Pour apprendre le français, nous allons inventer une histoire...”) Their adventures together offer an opportunity to focus on various aspects of French culture, history, geography, and everyday life: working, traveling, dining, shopping, etc. The story is structured as a romantic comedy, featuring an abundance of appealing personalities or, in one case, a menacing one. Capretz’s brilliant sense of humor is an added feature. The action unfolds in an earlier era—before the introduction of the euro—and the France depicted seems almost too idyllic. But I didn’t mind, and I am following up by reading the original version of Laurence Wylie’s Les Français written in 1970. Both are intellectual achievements that have stood the test of time.

Review # 2 was written on 2018-09-11 00:00:00 Todd Eskes Sure, it's dated, but it's been the best thing I've used so far to help my build from a long-ago foundation of French. I've been watching the Annenberg videos, one per day, followed by the book. It's still very hard to understand French at the normal pace of a speaker, but I can understand a lot as Capretz reviews the videos in a slower pace and with repetition.