Mon Monstre et Moi: Learn French with Your Dragon and Other Monsters! by Ellen Hartsfield (review)

Right from the start, Ellen Hartsfield’s book enthralls an entire generation of young students mesmerized by the world of Dragons and other marvelous, fairy-tale like creatures. As popular as this might sound, the book attracts youth without losing the academic rigor of second language education methodology. A clear explanation of the program and its pedagogy precedes the sixteen chapters and includes a guide for using accessible online resources from Quia and related links. Moreover, the author, a college professor with 15 years’ teaching experience, brings something different in this initial guided tour and explains not only what the learner will pursue, but also how to study and teach this method. No doubt this is a refreshing angle for young educators who are still green in language methodology, as well as a pleasant reminder for those of us who have been set in our ways for too long of why we love teaching French.

Mon Monstre et Moi, can be easily adapted to different academic levels: college, high-school, middle school, or a self-study course. This leaves readers a wide range of choices and the pedagogical responsibility to carefully select from the extremely rich and diversified vocabulary lists, work sheets, grammar exercises, videos, and games. Another element that makes this course stand out is that each chapter is diversified following the learner’s natural curve in linguistic progress. Chapitre Un focuses on basic lists of vocabulary such as cognates, simple sentences, and conversational tips, then middle chapters such as Chapitre Huit present numerous worksheets with past tense and lists of synonyms imbedded in conversations or short videos.

The innovative Monster Method is an easy to follow guide for teachers who are looking for accessible teaching materials: worksheets for every new grammar structure, easy going quizzes, oral and written exams, dictations, songs, translations, fill in the blank exercises, verb conjugations, and, last but not least, pronunciation practice. Cultural immersion and vocabulary enhancement is subtly omnipresent in all the examples. The final part of Madame Hartsfield’s comprehensive book/student workbook offers no less than 34 mots-croisés/crossword puzzles inspired from Dragon-themed movies along with an Answer Key, no doubt a very appealing feature to all autodidacts out there. Thirsty for a easy to use grammar tool, many French instructors will find in this book not only a helpful resource of exercises but also a well-thought-out set of methods that has proved to be successful with second language learners. For example, when prompted to use an adverbial pronoun inside a sentence, learners are given the opportunity to practice and compare this pronoun in three temporal contexts by using the same sentence in past tense, present, and future. Thus, exercises follow an inner logic of completing the task at hand for a specific grammar lesson, but also of reviewing and practicing additional elements like vocabulary, other grammar topics, expressions, pronunciation, or even skills for writing sentences and compositions.

One detail that enhances the easy approach of this method is the bonus question (Le crédit supplémentaire) at the end of each quiz, as a friendly reminder to all learners that they are allowed to make mistakes but that they are also able to excel in their learning process.

Does this particularly comprehensive book signal something new on the market for French language methodology? No doubt about it! In reviewing this book, I learned too, and will use these methods. Chapitre quinze gives examples of French verbs of preference, showing them in combination with definite articles, possessive adjectives, or demonstrative adjectives. The beauty of these examples is in the additional practice, while reminding students that definite articles are retained in negative sentences. Passages with short explanations and examples followed immediately by 4 to 5 practice sentences exemplify the entire method.

By the way, did I mention that these short and clear explanations are basically replacing the sometimes-heavy morphology, syntax, lexical, or phonologic long...