Table Of ContentSpeed Up Your French
Speed Up Your French is a unique and innovative resource that identifies and
explains the errors most commonly made by students of French.
From false friends to idiomatic expressions and the use of prepositions, each of
the nine chapters focuses on an aspect of the language where English speakers
typically make mistakes. Full explanations are provided throughout with clear,
comprehensive examples, enabling students to acquire a surer grasp of French
vocabulary and idiom, as well as grammar.
Key features:
• carefully selected grammar topics and examples based on the most
commonly made errors
• extensive exercises and answer key to reinforce learning, link theory to
practice and promote self-study
• use of mnemonic devices, including illustrations, to aid understanding
• supplementary exercises and answer key available at www.routledge.com/
cw/jubb.
Suitable for either classroom use or self-study, Speed Up Your French is the ideal
resource for all intermediate learners of French wishing to refine their language
skills.
Margaret Jubb is Honorary Senior Lecturer in French at the University of
Aberdeen.
Speed Up Your Language Skills
SERIES EDITOR: Javier Muñoz-Basols, University of Oxford, UK
The Speed Up Your Language Skills series publishes innovative, high-quality
textbooks focusing on common errors as an effective tool to improve one’s skills
in a foreign language. Such errors are often either driven by linguistic transfer from
English or caused by common misperceptions about the grammatical structure
of a foreign language.
The primary objectives of the series are to explain and illustrate in context the most
common errors made by English-speaking students in a foreign language and to
classify them in easy-to-reference categories. Students can thus learn the
appropriate usage of words and expressions and understand the reasons why they
persistently make the same mistakes. The inclusion of exercises, shortcuts,
mnemonic devices and much-needed strategies, not usually seen in conventional
grammar books, facilitates vocabulary acquisition and mastery of essential
grammatical elements.
Books in the series are intended as primary or supplementary texts at the
intermediate and advanced levels. Due to its self-explanatory approach and user-
friendly format, the series is also recommended for self-learners who wish to ‘speed
up’ their language skills.
Available titles in the series:
Speed up your Arabic
Sebastian Maisel
Speed up your Chinese
Shin Yong Robson
Speed up your French
Margaret Jubb
Speed up your Korean
Lucien Brown and Jaehoon Yeon
Speed up your Spanish
Javier Muñoz-Basols, Marianne David and Olga Núñez Piñeiro
Speed Up Your French
Strategies to avoid common errors
Margaret Jubb
First published 2016
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2016 Margaret Jubb
The right of Margaret Jubb to be identified as author of this work has
been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or
other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying
and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without
permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Jubb, Margaret A.
Title: Speed up your French : strategies to avoid common errors /
Margaret Jubb.
Description: Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, [2016] |
Series: Speed up your Language Skills | Includes bibliographical references
and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2015035056| ISBN 9781138849990 (hardback : alk. paper) |
ISBN 9781138850002 (pbk. : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781315725062 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: French language—Grammar—Problems, exercises, etc. |
French language--Errors in usage. | French language—Textbooks for foreign
speakers—English.
Classification: LCC PC2460 .J83 2016 | DDC 448.2/421—dc23
LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015035056
ISBN: 978-1-138-84999-0 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-138-85000-2 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-72506-2 (ebk)
Typeset in Swiss 721 and Zapf Calligraphic
by Florence Production Ltd, Stoodleigh, Devon, UK
Additional materials are available on the companion website at www.routledge.com/cw/jubb
Contents
Introduction vii
1 Gender and number 1
2 Mastering false friends: verbs 34
3 Mastering false friends: nouns 53
4 Mastering false friends: adjectives and adverbs 90
5 Common verb phrases and idiomatic expressions 110
6 Pronominal verbs 137
7 Problem pairs and other misused expressions 160
8 Use of prepositions 187
9 Spelling and more 215
Appendix 1: Use of prepositions with names of countries
and islands 230
Appendix 2: Answer key to exercises 235
Bibliography 245
Index 247
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Introduction
This book is intended for English-speaking students, either at secondary school
or at university, who have attained an intermediate level in French. It is designed
primarily as a guide for self-learning, though it could also be used as a supplement
to classroom materials, both for intermediate-level students and for more advanced
students who need to revise particular areas of the language.
It focuses on the aspects of foreign language, such as false friends, idiomatic
expressions, and the use of prepositions that typically cause English speakers
difficulty in their production and understanding of French. The aim is to enable
students to identify, understand and overcome their errors in order to become more
competent and confident language users with a surer grasp of vocabulary and
idiom, as well as grammar.
The illustrative examples that accompany the sections of explanation are as
important as the explanations themselves in encouraging students to break old
connections based on false analogies with English and form new connections and
associations with other related French expressions. Students will develop their own
learning strategies through active engagement with the material in the book, but
at particular points mnemonic devices are suggested, both for immediate support
and in the hope that they will encourage the creation of other self-tailored devices.
Throughout the book, it is emphasised that the examples given can rarely be
exhaustive, and students are advised, when appropriate, to consult a good
bilingual dictionary or a reference grammar to further their independent learning.
Active learning is promoted by the extensive exercises and answer key for self-
checking. In each chapter, the final exercise takes the form of a continuous text
with gaps to be filled. Unlike the earlier sentence-based exercises, each of which
relates to a particular section or sections of a chapter, this final exercise covers
the whole chapter and serves as a revision tool.
It would be impossible to cover in a single book every type of common error,
so a selection has necessarily had to be made. The author has deliberately decided
viii Speed Up Your French
not to write a revision grammar, but rather to follow the precedent set by the
Spanish volume in the Speed Up Your Languageseries with a focus on vocabulary
and idiom as much as on grammar. This book brings together a variety of material,
accompanied by exercises, that is not readily available elsewhere in such a
systematised form. We hope that it will enable students to improve their mastery
of French not only by avoiding common errors but also by acquiring a deeper
understanding of the language and a richer range of expression.
Chapter 1 deals with the gender and number of simple and compound nouns
in French. The first part underlines how important it is for students to learn the
gender of nouns so they can improve the accuracy of their spoken and written
French. A list of general patterns helps to predict the gender of a noun, in some
cases according to meaning, but more often according to ending. Notable
exceptions are highlighted and attention is drawn to common problem nouns.
Some subtleties of the language are then explored by discussing nouns that
change meaning according to gender, e.g. un crème(a white coffee) as opposed
to la crème(cream), or whose gender varies according to use, e.g. tous les braves
gens(m.), but toutes les vieilles gens(f.). The second part of the chapter focuses
on the formation of the plural of simple and compound nouns in French. It then
highlights differences between the two languages in their treatment of the plural,
discussing cases where a plural in French corresponds to a singular in English
and vice versa. The final section of the chapter tackles common problems with
adjective agreements, which arise as soon as matters of gender and number are
considered.
Chapters 2, 3 and 4, though they deal respectively with verbs, nouns, and
adjectives and adverbs, all focus on the phenomenon of ‘false friends’, which are
a common cause of error for English-speaking students. These words look like
English words, but they have a different meaning. In each chapter, there are
two lists, the first consisting of ‘false friends’ proper and the second of words
whose meaning overlaps partially with the assumed English equivalent. Example
sentences are chosen to illustrate the meaning of the words in context and useful
phrases are given to help fix them in the memory. Related words and synonyms
are discussed, all with the aim of expanding students’ vocabulary and accuracy
of usage.
Chapter 5 deals with common phrases and idiomatic expressions used with
the verbs aller, avoir, donner, être, faire, mettre, prendre, tenir, tomber andvenir.
If students are not aware of the variety of ways in which these verbs are used and
how often their meaning is not a literal one, e.g. venir de faire quelque chose(to
have just done something), common errors of misunderstanding may arise. This
chapter encourages students to add these expressions to their active, as well as
their passive, vocabulary.
Chapter 6highlights pronominal verbs like se débrouiller(to manage). English-
speaking students of French are sometimes surprised by the frequency with which
Introduction ix
these verbs occur when there is no reflexive or reciprocal meaning at issue. This
chapter explains how and why they are used, and distinguishes between the
pronominal and non-pronominal usage of verbs like améliorer/s’améliorer (to
improve). It also discusses the use of a pronominal verb to translate an English
passive and the distinction, often problematic for an English speaker, between
action and state, as in elle s’assied (she sits down) and elle est assise (she is
sitting).
Chapter 7examines so-called problem pairs and other misused expressions.
The problems discussed in the first part of the chapter arise from pairs or groups
of French words that students sometimes find it difficult to choose between. These
include: verbs such as savoir and connaître; nouns such as le parti, la partie, and
la part; the pronouns yand en; and the adjective meilleurand the adverb mieux
for ‘better/best’. The next section of the chapter considers common French
expressions that have more than one meaning, e.g. arriver(to arrive or to happen).
The chapter concludes by highlighting some common French expressions that
are sometimes misused, e.g. il s’agit de (it is a question of; it is about) or
misunderstood, e.g. tu me manques(I miss you).
Chapter 8deals with the use of prepositions. This is an area that can still cause
difficulties even for quite advanced language learners, because usage is idiomatic
and frequently different from English. The opening material is sub-divided into four
categories (place, time, manner, measurement). Differences between the two
languages in each category are then highlighted and mnemonic devices are
provided to help reinforce the points. The remaining four sections of the chapter
discuss: (i) common translation problems from English to French posed by
particular prepositions; (ii) French verbs with two different usages, e.g. penser à
and penser de; (iii) different constructions in English and French after a verb, e.g.
dépendre de(to depend on); (iv) the translation of English phrasal verbs, e.g. ‘to
swim across’, into French.
Chapter 9 presents spelling and more. It highlights key differences between
French and English with regard to spelling, capitalisation and the presentation of
numbers. It also focuses on particular features of French, such as the use of
accents, elision and the notion of the aspirate ‘h’. The exercises enable students
to practise the various conventions and hence improve the professional
appearance of their written French.
Appendix 1 is intended to complement Chapter 8 by providing students with
more detailed information about the usage of prepositions with names of countries
and islands. Experience has shown that although general guidance, as given in
Chapter 8, is a good starting point, students often need more specific guidance
and more information than they can find in a dictionary about a variety of place
names.
Appendix 2 provides answers to the exercises contained in the chapters of the
book.
