Ultimate French Resources #1

At the start of my career tutoring French, I was a huge consumer of French grammar books. In fact, French language books of all kinds - I wanted them all. As befitting my personality (and that of many of our students, I hear), each book has two or three pages completed and the rest of the book is entirely blank. A true addict, once I'd realised a particular book was not going to magically make me speak French fluently, I discarded it and went looking for my next dose*. So the books piled up until I nearly ran out of new ones to buy. Sounding familiar?

Over the years, though, I've noticed there are a couple I return to time and again and along with a couple of websites, they have really become my French bibles.

In the next few newsletters, we'll cover my top five. Let's start with a fantastique* website: Lawless French.

WHAT:

A website for learners of all levels

WHO:

Laura K. Lawless, an American woman, fluent in French, based in Guadeloupe, who is also responsible for the French for Dummies book, which is actually very good.

POINTS FORTS*:

Very, very thorough, you can sign up for a weekly newsletter with helpful tips and for more advanced levels, her 'Subjunctivisor" will tell you whether your sentence requires the subjunctive or not. Very useful.

POINT FAIBLE*:

It's not a particularly beautiful site, but it is nonetheless very, very good.

*fix | *fantastic | *best bits | *weak point