Speed up Your French: Strategies to Avoid Common Errors by Margaret Jubb (review)

Jubb, Margaret. Speed up Your French: Strategies to Avoid Common Errors. New York: Routledge, 2016. ISBN 978-1-138-85000-2. Pp. 254. $40. This reference book has a rather audacious claim as it belongs to a series encouraging English-speaking students to Speed up their language skills. Instructors will certainly understand this claim in terms of proficiency when it is not the series’s goal. By focusing solely on French idioms and grammar, the text aims to clarify common mistakes often caused by a transfer from the English language and misconceptions about grammatical structures. Consequently, its nine chapters address topics that may cause frustrations for learners of French. Concepts such as Gender and number, Mastering false friends, Pronominal verbs, Use of prepositions clearly demonstrate that students will not find lengthy explanations on French syntax and tenses here, but will be able to thoroughly examine each of these topics, often covered too briefly in textbooks . In fact, Mastering false friends requires coverage from several chapters, each targeting a different structure: verbs, nouns, adjectives, and adverbs. Each chapter’s layout and content selection assist self-learners with these challenging concepts when studying on their own. On the first page, a table of contents lists topics for easy reference to specific items accompanied by a humorous illustration capturing one of the challenges presented in the corresponding chapter. Explanations are provided in English and all examples are accompanied with a translation, while content is mainly organized under lists to make it easy for students to reference topics quickly. A teacher’s voice, indicated by boxes set apart from the main text, provides strategies and mnemonic devices to facilitate students’learning. Similarly, comments introduced by a star and words such as “Note” and “However” either emphasize specific items or give learners more tips. Readers may find this technique reduces the monotony of such a reference text; but others may see its repetition as making the studying more tedious. Therefore, to further engage students in active learning, each section includes one or several activities, such as fill-in-the-blanks, matching or multiple choice questions exercises. Each chapter ends with an activity synthesizing content from the many sections it contains. Everything is conceived so that learners can study on their own and practice without encountering too much frustration, to this end, the appendix contains the answer-key for all activities. Overall, this reference book is a good addition to complement existing manuals on the French language as it responds to a need for intermediate and upper level students. Motivated students and self-directed learners will indeed increase their understanding and factual knowledge of the French language . Nonetheless, they will also need an instructor to create communicative and contextualized speaking and writing activities to speed up its acquisition.As such, this book would be appropriate as a recommended text to a translation or a writing course. Yet, its claim to speed up one’s language skills remains audacious since a reference book is only one of the tools that can improve students’ learning. University of Wisconsin, La Crosse Virginie Cassidy 232 FRENCH REVIEW 90.3 ...