...I've been using Ribiere and Marriott's Advanced French Grammar since its new second edition came out in spring 2000 and finding it invaluable as a development and self-study guide so that when I began teaching French in the autumn of 2001 I quickly ordered a copy of this Essential French Grammar from Amazon Books in the UK. First, let me say, that amazon.co.uk are amazing, their turnaround and delivery times are first rate. From my order late on Thursday afternoon it took only until early Saturday morning (first post) to have the book on my desk and being used. And using the book is a treat, too. Ribiere and Marriott have provided a full glossary of the vocabulary your students need for GCSE in England & Wales and Standard Grade in Scotland which is, thoughtfully, provided both ways, ie French to English and then, English to French and which Longman's printers have made easier to read by using blue tone ink to contrast with the black.
The exercise key section or answer pages are perforated like the Advanced French Grammar, so that if you only have one copy for your whole class you can remove these pages to make the challenge of the questions and exercises a little more demanding for your pupils. Although, the chapter structure and the way the grammar is presented in a graded way make this book suitable as a class set which you could use for classwork and for homework setting and the pupils could mark their own work.
The topics in work books often seem to take you back to the Paris of the fifties, a kind of sepia-toned version of Simenon's Maigret, 'Il bourra lentement sa pipe debout au bord du trottoir' but not this Essential Help Yourself. They've made it lively and very relevant to kids in the vingt-et-unieme siecle. For example, advice to babysitters (page 112) , how much do you know about le sida (111), buying gifts to help with students' knowledge of adjectives and organising une grosse boum dans le garage (45-46).
All the usual suspects are thoroughly dealt with: the object pronouns y and en, dealing with the future, qui and que, the conditional and even a short but very clear intro to the subjunctive. Excellent stuff. And all this rounded off with a range of appendices at the back of the book that pupils love to use to check verb endings. In fact, they've included a list of conjunctions (146) which younger learners always have trouble with and which I've never seen any other work-book give space to, link words like tandis que, aussitot que, and so on.
If you want to breathe life into your French classes next term help yourself to a set of these.
(Note: accented characters have not been used in this review article because of the recent problems in the new versions of American web browsers)
Charlie Mansfield 5th November 2001
