French: Short Stories for Beginners + Audio Download: Improve your reading and listening skills in French (Easy French Beginner Stories)

My background consists of 4 semesters of French and some practice using the language in France. I am more fluent in speaking Spanish which I find to be helpful with learning French as they are similar. I am particularly fond of the French language in addition to their culture and have been looking for an easy way to brush up on my skill and regain anything I have lost over the years. I bought this ebook to practice French on my own time and at my own pace. I bought the kindle version so that I can read it on my commute or wherever convenient. This e-book takes a different approach to teaching language when compared to how I learned it in school. The approach is basically a full immersion experience when are reading stories stories written in French. The preface recommends to not focus on translating every word on the first go. Each chapter is a short story broken up into sections that are 4-6 sentences long. The sentences are completely in french and bolded words are translated after. At the end of the chapters there is a dictionary to recap bolded words that were learned in the chapter. I found myself retaining a lot more information than I would have thought. I think breaking down the story to a couple of sentences at a time helps me read through and comprehend it more. If I was confused about any words the vocabulary recap immediately follows and allows me to go back and translate some of the story. I think that this method is a much more natural way to grasp the language rather than how it is taught in school which was learning the nouns and verbs first before piecing together sentences. This e-book also includes a link to download many mp3s of short stories. There is a slow version of the story and a regularly paced version. I find this also to be extremely valuable although there is no translation to English so this may be frustrating if there is a part of the story you are not understand. Overall, I find this to be a very valuable tool for those looking to brush up on their French or teach themselves the language. I personally would find it hard to start with this e-book if I had no prior experience with learning French or other languages but your mileage may vary. This is definitely money well spent and I would buy another e-book if they publish one for a different language.

I purchased the book French: Short Stories for Beginners + French Audio: Improve your reading and listening skills in French. Learn French with Stories (French Short Stories Book 1). I got the Kindle Edition. I love it! I took three years of French in High School. But, that was 15 years ago. I have retained some very basic knowledge of the language. I want to pick it up again. I thought this might be a good way to go. I was right. The book is made up of short stories making it interesting and easy to read even if you only have a few minutes at a time. Within the stories are bold print words and short phrases. After each paragraph, those words are listed with their translations. So, when I got stuck, I just peeked ahead to the list and could get moving again. At the end of the chapter there is a full list of the vocabulary for review. I was always better at reading French than listening to a conversation in French. The audiobook download (the instructions are at the end of the Kindle Edition book) is a terrific part of the book. You get the best of both worlds! After I brush up my reading skills, I can use it as an audiobook to improve pronunciation and conversational skills. At the end of the book there is contact information, if you should have any problems. They really have you covered! This is a fun learning tool. I just pop my Kindle in my bag and I am studying French on my lunch break and even while waiting in the doctor's office. I would highly recommend this book to anyone starting out or brushing up French language skills.

I as a beginner liked this easy conversational french course. I liked the fact that it suggested to read slow at first if your a beginner. It has the recorded book at the back which was easy to find.I appreciate listening to it. The easy conversations that took place going around in a circle were easy to keep up with and the words were easy to read and pronounce. I especially liked the the English translation after each conversation. Its a great book to learn French conversation for when traveling.

This is exactly what I was looking for to supplement my irregular French lessons. Some books for beginners were still hard for me, in some I did not like the topic. Here there are several stories with a great vocabulary work out and, what I even could not dream about, audio with slow and normal speed. I just went though the 1st story, but I liked the approach much!

Five stars! I am at an “infant” beginner level to French and I found this book absolutely helpful. The few points I love are: 1. Short paragraphs accompanied with explanations for some words/phrases. This makes the studying process not too overwhelmed, I felt accomplished after each paragraph done. 2. There is a recap of the words/phrases at the end of each story so I can review/test my progress. This double reinforcement works nice with learning a language. 3. The topics are common daily situations, so you know, whatever you most see everyday, there is a French word for it in the book! 4. The AUDIO makes EVERYTHING better. Listening to what I just studied make things stick to my head much better. Plus I can listen to these on the go, very convenient. This is how I used this books: I read the recap at the end of each story first, then listen to the audio to see how much words I could tell, then study the detailed story.

I’m currently learning French via Duolingo. I really liked their short stories feature and wanted to further that by reading actual non-kiddish stories in addition to the Duolingo lessons/drills. I was really excited about this book because it’s suppose to be stories meant for adults but with simpler French. However, the stories are honestly really, really boring. They’re less “stories” and felt more like forcing a list of vocabulary into a “story”. For example, the first story started with a girl who went to visit and live with her pen pal abroad. I was intrigued. Then the story quickly became the 2 of them going to a French learning class where literally it’s 2 pages of people introducing themselves and saying where they’re from. Like “je suis francais” “Je suis russe”, “je suis japonais”, etc. followed by 2 pages of “translation” like “I am French.” “I am Russian”, etc. Another story was about a girl’s birthday, and she invited her friend over for the first time to meet her family. Intriguing to start, but again, the story just became her introducing every single family member... this is my mom, dad, brother, sister, cousin, grandma, grandpa, great grandpa, great aunt, second cousin, etc. They read like those school exercises where they ask you to use some word in a sentence. It’s really more a vocabulary dump than an actual story. The book also highlights seemingly random words to provide definitions for (ie they translated . About a third of the book is actual French stories, the other two thirds are vocabulary definitions, or literally typing out then story again but with English translation underneath it, so don’t be fooled by the length of the book. On the plus side, reading a book gives a better sense of how French works compared to just going the lessons on duolingo. It also offers audio files to listen to (I think it’s literally the author reading it and uploaded on a website lol but whatever works). There also seems to be a very low supply of beginner French stories, so honestly there aren’t a lot of choices. I also bought “short stories in French” by olly Richards and I like that one a lot more. It’s actual stories with reading comprehensive questions in French at the end. Though that book is more advanced than this.

I am studying French for the first time. The first book offers detailed pronunciation that is great for beginners. I believe the hardest part for an English speaker is the French 'r' and 'n'. With an accompanying CD (when used in my laptop), I can slide back and hear a word repeatedly so I can develop those sounds. I am grateful for the system of learning: blocks of numbers, blocks of grammar, because my mind still thinks that way. New systems, like Pimsleur (which I tried and did not like) dump the student into situations where you learn in a chaotic manner. Some systems, again like Pimsleur, do not give students written lines to what they are hearing. I am a visual person; when I can see a word and hear it, I learn faster and with more confidence when I see new words with letters and combinations that are new to English speakers. My only

I thought French: Short Stories for Beginners + Audio was a great book. I took French in High school and 2 semesters in college, and it was a refresher and very easy to follow. I wasn't sure that I would be able to follow after years of not reading french (and not really speaking a lot of it). But i found it extremely helpful that the glossary of words within each story assisted in translation. I think this book is great for someone who may need to learn french quickly, for conversational French, someone traveling to French speaking countries. I would recommend this to anyone with an interest in French. It's easy to read and easy to follow the story lines. the MP3 version is VERY helpful in pronunciation. Many people find out hard to follow just the breakdown of words. they may grasp the concept, but be phonetically challenged. Hearing it spoken is a plus!

I love it!

Muito boa experiência que o material traz. No fim do livro há o link com o conteúdo de áudios para acompanhar junto com a leitura. Há 2 disponibilidades de áudio, sendo uma mais lenta e outra em velocidade normal. No meio dos capítulos há algumas palavras chaves com seus respectivos significados, mas em inglês. Ainda que a pessoa não saiba inglês eu recomendo, pois a leitura acompanhada de texto auxilia no aprendizado. A diferença é que talvez tenha que procurar estas e outras palavras em um dicionário Francês - Português.

Un libro bonito, divertido y ameno. Los audios son una gran ayuda para aprender. El hecho que el diccionario lo pueda uno poner en Francés y traducir de inmediato refuerza el conocimiento, además del vocabulario sugerido El dicionario es de Kindle por cierto ;-)

単語の意味や英語の訳もあり、ビギナーには、とても使いやすいと思います。

Unique way to learn. This is one of many ways I am trying to learn French. It is certainly helpful for learning conversational French but not French Grammer.