Chapeau! First-Year French

Reviewed by Peter Eubanks, Associate Professor of French, James Madison University on 5/29/20

Comprehensiveness rating: 4 see less

There is an effective index, French-English glossary, and English-French glossary. The coverage of introductory French vocabulary and grammar is quite good, though, as the book acknowledges itself in the introduction, some interesting choices are made as to what gets covered and what does not (i.e. possessive pronouns are not covered, but the subjunctive is covered).

Content Accuracy rating: 5

The content is correct, without errors, and unbiased.

Relevance/Longevity rating: 2

The content is often not up-to-date. It is from an out-of-print edition of a 1989 textbook. The textbooks refers to francs, makes no references to the internet or to vocabulary words that have developed since 1989. The grammar is correct and up-to-date and will never become obsolete. The learning styles privileged feel a little out of place in the twenty-first century—memorization of set dialogues, little visual content, no video, very little music, very little of the communicative method, very little acknowledgement of non-white, non-French speakers of French throughout the world. Updates can be implemented, but this would take some concerted effort, since the text sometimes reads like a time capsule from 1989.

Clarity rating: 5

There is an avoidance of jargon and technical terminology, which makes the text more readable and accessible. The grammatical explanations are entirely in English, which also makes the text more readable and accessible to the first-year French student.

Consistency rating: 5

The text is internally consistent in terms of terminology and framework. Material is presented in a logical progression of information.

Modularity rating: 4

There are numerous portions of the text that can be divided up and used separately, outside of the context of the text as a whole. These portions can serve to supplement any other text(s) that an instructor may wish to use in the classroom.

Organization/Structure/Flow rating: 5

Everything appears well organized, clearly and coherently structured, and with logical flow.

Interface rating: 2

The images in the text are sometimes difficult to discern clearly, and the words on the page are sometimes also not clearly visible.

Grammatical Errors rating: 5

There are no grammatical errors.

Cultural Relevance rating: 2

The text contains images of white persons only, in spite of the fact that French is spoken by many non-white peoples throughout the world. The text focuses almost exclusively on the experience of metropolitan France, in spite of the fact that French is spoken by many peoples outside of metropolitan France. There is a brief mention of Quebec and a brief mention of the Qur’an.

Comments

This textbook has much in the way of grammar and vocabulary exercises and explanations that could be useful as supplements to a first-year French course, but its overall approach is outdated.