The two Shaum's Outlines books that I have on the french langauge written by Mary E. Coffman Crocker are brilliant in my opinion. They are very well presented, very good value for money, and also seem to be quite comprehensive and thorough. The two books that I have are 'French Grammar', and the subject of this review, 'French Vocabulary'. It would of course be possible to buy a dictionary and attempt to memorize all of the words directly from the dictionary. Afterall, there are a lot more words in the dictionary than in this vocabulary book, so why get it? The answer is practicality. It is far more valuable to me to augment my french vocabulary by learning groups of nouns, (and the relevant verbs), covering certain subject areas, and this book does the work for you for a lot of basic and common situations, meaning you don't have to write a list of the words you think you'll need in different situations and then look them up in a dictionary. This book does not contain every word in the dictionary, but it contains thousands of useful nouns and associated verbs for use in practical situations, and as such I think it's a very good practical book for gaining vocabulary.
The book is split up into major sections that have been called Units, and like the 'French Grammar' book, there are quite a lot (but certainly not too many; just about the right number) of exercises every few pages, which is a bonus. The exercises are one of the things that I like most about these books. The units from 1 to 10 are as follows:
1.Travel, 2.Services, 3.Food, 4.Shopping, 5.Medical care, 6.Home life, 7.Entertainment, 8.Sports and leisure activities, 9.Education, and 10.At work.
Each unit is split up into subsections, (e.g. Unit 6; Home life is split up into The kitchen, the bathroom, the dining room, the living room, the bedroom, and housework). In each subsection there is at least one large black and white illustration with labels, and there is a list of useful nouns and also useful verbs. There are lots of example sentences and occasionally large pieces of example text, and a good number of exercises should you wish to do them. One major feature of this book is that it makes good use of illustrations.
Overall I'd certainly recommend this book to friends. It's a big, well presented, modern vocabulary book with a practical approach and good use of illustrations to make the learning more varied and hence more interesting. It seems to have just the right balance of illustrations, lists of words, exercises, and example sentences. There are also appendices including large glossaries of English-French and French-English, each some 50 pages long.
The Schaum guides are printed in a fairly cheap and cheerful fashion, but at least you won't feel guilty scribbling notes on the pages.They are certainly useful guides with plenty of valuable information, and if you work your way through them you will improve the quality of your French.
The presentation of material is a bit dull and uninspiring, making the tricky task of self-motivation that bit harder.
I showed the Vocab and Verbs guides to a native French speaker, and she pointed out numerous expressions & phrases that no French person would use. I assume this is because the books originate in Canada and therefore contain N.American as well as pure French.
However, the pros outweigh the cons. You'll be speaking far better french after using these guides than before, and it's better to be speaking slightly quirky French than Franglais. You get a lot of useful information for your money, and the only snag is there is no easy way to learn a language, you have to plough through the exercises.
Alternatively, purists may want to look at the more expensive but excellent Champs Elysees audio magazine - a series of monthly tapes that are great for intermediate speakers looking to advance the standard of their French.
