Short Stories in French for Beginners (Teach Yourself Short Stories)

I have been wanting to take my French to the next level and this book was perfect. It introduced new vocabulary in story one and then builds on those vocabulary words with each new story. Each story has three chapters and I gain confidence with each story as more and more words become familiar. It’s helpful to read the beginning on how to use the book as he reminds readers they are not going to understand each word and to read through each story before looking up any words to see if you get the gist of the story from the context. I will admit I usually pull out google translate after I have read the story twice to make sure I am getting it right but I definitely understand way more than I did when I started this book last week.

I originally started listening to this on Spotify and then later found the book on amazon. It's great because you can read along, get an understanding and then go back and just listen so that you're able to practice just focusing on their pronunciation. I truly feel like my french has improved since pairing this book with the audio.

The stories are ok, I was not expecting Dostoevsky so no problem there. I am little disappointed with the "unknown" words they provide a translation for, what could possibly be the meaning of:Les weekendsLa régionL'excursionLa légendeLa créatureExplorer?Those are just examples from three pages in one chapter. Waist of time.

I find reading stories in French fair more helpful in learning the language than the usual memorization techniques and these stories are entertaining!

Wow! This book surprised me nicely. To be honest, I was quite sceptical at the beginning since French phonetics isn't the easiest one, and I was wondering how reading can help me to speak the language properly. I mean, all the nasal sounds, silent letters, and knowing where to stress!I had already passed the beginer's stage in French, but sill wasn't confident in speaking.When I started to read this book in Kindle, I quickly become fascinated with how this format enable me to use this book.Not only are the stories interesting and enjoyable, but reading them in Kindle, you can check the pronunciation using the translation function FRENCH - FRENCH (pictures attached). You can also check the definition of words or translate expressions into other languages. I had quite a fun ocassionaly translating some sentences into Chinese and other languages that I've been learning. After each chapter, you have the excersices with questions, where you can highlight your answers and check them on the next page!As for the writing style of this book, it uses a variety of useful expressions, which will help you to become more conversational in the language.I'm not sure how much a total beginner would benefit from the book, but I suppose that as long as you already know some other Romance language, you will intuitively make sense of the grammatical structure and figure out a lot of lexical meanings by yourself.These 8 stories can keep you entertained for quite a long time if you really work with the text and reread them again to get a better grasp. For the price offered for Kindle, it's a bargain! You should give it a try

I started learning French 119 days ago according to my progress report on duolingo. Great app by the way. I have bought a number of children's books to practice French with as well, but they are for kids so the stories were a bit corny. I saw this book and figured I would check it out. I've completed 47 sections on duolingo and have started Rosetta stone so my vocabulary is growing, but not huge. This book is awesome. I can understand 80-90% of the stories. I keep google translate opened for when I get stuck, but there are also bolded phrases that are defined at the end of the chapter you can go look at. there is a chapter review en francais at the end and a few multiple choice questions as well. Would I recommend it for learning? That's tough. That is a difficult way to learn. plus you have to have some French vocabulary as a foundation to even begin, but as a tool to practice reading and understanding as well as learning new words and phrases, its awesome. I have finished two of the stories so far. they are engaging enough to keep you interested beyond your desire to study French. If you are doing an app or rosetta stone and want to have something other than repetitive drills and single words or phrases, I highly recommend this book. its boosted my confidence with the language and I have learned a lot about sentence structure from it, like how things are said in the French language beyond a single sentence or phrase. I have a long way to go to be fluent, but they should write more of these and have them for multiple levels.

I've been studying French for over a year using apps, and I wanted to progress into reading rather than just memorizing grammar and vocabulary. This book was perfect! The stories are broken into short chapters, and there are bolded vocabulary words that are translated after the chapter; however, no complete English translation is provided anywhere in the book. Even the reading comprehension quizzes, which appear after each chapter, are entirely in French. The English introduction explains that part of learning to read in a foreign language is just like learning to read in your native language -- you need to read what you can, and then you'll learn new words through the context of the story. This means you won't understand every word.Overall the book was at a perfect level for me, but I have been studying the basics for awhile. I would recommend this for high-beginners to intermediate. It would probably be too hard if you're just starting out, because many of the stories have fantasy elements too, which adds to the complexity when reading. I plan to buy the Intermediate volume after I spend some more time re-reading these stories.

Great