FRENCH COMME IL FA UT
complete and up-to-date course in French. By Professor Frangois Denoeu, Dartmouth College. 223 pp. The Dartmouth Bookstore.
This comprehensive course in French is the result of thirteen years of study and experiment by one who has had excellent university training and wide experience in teaching. Professor Denoeu, agrege deI'universite (the highest degree granted by the French Ministry of Education), taught English in France and French in Scotland before coming to the United States. His success as a teacher at Dartmouth during the last four years is further proof that his double point of view has enabled him to recognize and to meet satisfactorily the particular needs of various kinds of language students.
French comme il faut is a carefully graded, progressive study of French as spoken in Paris today. It contains thirtysix lessons, dealing with characteristic events in the life of a typical French family, plus a list of common conversational expressions, a table of irregular verbs, and a few remarks about French spelling. Each lesson, built up around some particular experience of the Defrance family (in the subway, at the theatre, on the beach, at the automobile show, etc.) consists of a story for reading, explanations of certain points of grammar, examples of good usage, tables of common expressions, practice in pronunciation, oral composition, idiom study, anecdotes, and drill in conversation.
A course in French which attempts to be complete is very likely to be pedantic and is very often more confusing than helpful. The most admirable thing about Professor Denoeu's book is that it is not the least bit "bookish." Complete and up-to-date, as the title claims, it is also lively, interesting, clear, and above all, idiomatic. Archaic terms and learned expressions are pointed out only in order that they may be avoided. French idioms are carefully explained and (what is rare for our language books) are put into exact American equivalents. In a marginal column on the right of each page a running comment in English, set opposite the French text, helps to clear up the difficulties common to English speaking students. It gives translations of new words and unusual expressions, makes extended comparisons between the two languages, discusses synonyms and alternate expressions, and offers very pertinent suggestions about what not to say. In fact each lesson is packed with explanations and examples which should prove useful to teachers as well as to students.
The only serious defect in the book is due to the fact that the French printer, knowing no English, has often failed to set the English explanation opposite the French to which it refers. The entire column in English should be re-aligned for the next edition. A few typographical errors, an occasional confusion of English and American expressions, and two or three mistakes in detail are so lost in the mass of exact, useful information that they do not detract at all seriously from the practical value of the book.
In my opinion, we need more textbooks like this in our teaching of modern languages, whether in high school or in college. Students who master French comme ilfaut, when asked the usual question: "Do you speak French?," will not be obliged to reply shamefacedly: "Oh, no, I only had French in college."
