Customer Reviews
Quality/excellent value book. - By: the great amphibian, 20 Aug 2005 
The two Shaum's Outlines books that I have on the french langauge written by Mary E. Coffman Crocker are brilliantin my opinion. They are very well presented, very good value for money, & also seem to be quite comprehensive & thorough. The two books that I have are 'French Grammar', & the subject of this review, 'French Vocabulary'.
It would of course be possible to buy a dictionary & attempt to memorize all of the words directly from the dictionary. Afterall, there are a lot more wordsin the dictionary thanin this vocabulary book, so why get it? The answer is practicality. It is far more valuable to me to augment my french vocabulary by learning groups of nouns, (and the relevant verbs), covering certain subject areas, & this book does the work for you for a lot of basic & common situations, meaning you don't have to write a list of the words you think you'll needin different situations & then look them upin a dictionary. This book does not contain every wordin the dictionary, but it contains thousands of useful nouns & associated verbs for usein practical situations, & as such I think it's a very good practical book for gaining vocabulary.
The book is split up into major sections that have been called Units, & like the 'French Grammar' book, there are quite a lot (but certainly not too many; just about the right number) of exercises every few pages, which is a bonus. The exercises are one of the things that I like most about these books. The units from 1 to 10 are as follows:
1.Travel, 2.Services, 3.Food, 4.Shopping, 5.Medical care, 6.Home life, 7.Entertainment, 8.Sports & leisure activities, 9.Education, & 10.At work.
Each unit is split up into subsections, (e.g. Unit 6; Home life is split up into The kitchen, the bathroom, the dining room, the living room, the bedroom, & housework). In each subsection there is at least one large black & white illustration with labels, & there is a list of useful nouns & also useful verbs. There are lots of example sentences & occasionally large pieces of example text, & a good number of exercises should you wish to do them. One major feature of this book is that it makes good use of illustrations.
Overall I'd certainly recommend this book to friends. It's a big, well presented, modern vocabulary book with a practical approach & good use of illustrations to make the learning more varied & hence more interesting. It seems to have just the right balance of illustrations, lists of words, exercises, & example sentences. There are also appendices including large glossaries of English-French & French-English, each some 50 pages long.
Useful but Canadian origin not great for purists. - By: James Bury, 30 Mar 2004 
The Schaum guides are printedin a fairly cheap & cheerful fashion, but at least you won't feel guilty scribbling notes on the pages.
They are certainly useful guides with plenty of valuable information, & if you work your way through them you will improve the quality of your French.
The presentation of material is a bit dull & uninspiring, making the tricky task of self-motivation that bit harder.
I showed the Vocab & Verbs guides to a native French speaker, & she pointed out numerous expressions & phrases that no French person would use. I assume this is because the books originatein Canada & therefore contain N.American as well as pure French.
However, the pros outweigh the cons. You'll be speaking far better french after using these guides than before, & it's better to be speaking slightly quirky French than Franglais. You get a lot of useful information for your money, & the only snag is there is no easy way to learn a language, you have to plough through the exercises.
Alternatively, purists may want to look at the more expensive but excellent Champs Elysees audio magazine - a series of monthly tapes that are great for intermediate speakers looking to advance the standard of their French.
