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Tune Up Your French: Top 10 Ways to Improve Your Spoken French | 
| Author: Natalie Schorr
Publisher: McGraw-Hill
Category: Book
List Price: $15.95
Buy New: $10.85
You Save: $5.10 (32%)
Rating:  32 reviews
Sales Rank: 33627
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1st
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 224
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.9
Dimensions (in): 8.9 x 6 x 0.8
ISBN: 0071432299
Dewey Decimal Number: 448.3421
UPC: 639785387527
EAN: 9780071432290
Publication Date: July 1, 2004
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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Product Description
Readers can tune up their conversation skills with Tune Up guides--the next best thing to a year abroad! Getting beyond sounding like a beginner is more than just a matter of learning more vocabulary and grammar. It's also about understanding the culture and developing the right mind set for thinking, listening, and talking like a native. The next best thing to a year abroad, the books in this exciting new series offer language learners an entertaining and practical way to hone their foreign-language conversation skills. Tune Up books are structured around 10 key areas for improvement, covering everything from tricky grammatical structures to gestures, slang, and humor. In each area, key phrases are presented in "Top Ten" lists, including everyday expressions for filling pauses, icebreakers, and more. An excellent brushup for learners returning to a language they studied in high school or college, Tune Up books feature: - Practical advice on improving conversation skills
- Valuable insights into how difficult verbs and structures work
- Tips on how to avoid taboos and common faux pas
- A 60-minute audio CD with key phrase lists and exercises
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| Customer Reviews: Read 27 more reviews...
 Entertaining and Interesting September 3, 2004
88 out of 89 found this review helpful
"Tune Up Your French" is not your ordinary French book. The theme of the book does not emphasize the normal grammar structures or verb drills nor does it highlight naughty French gros mots. Instead, author Natalie Shorr extends an informative welcome to enter the inner circle of native French speakers in both understanding and imitation. She hits upon ten topics that will bring your formal textbook French to a more comfortable level where you and the person to which you are speaking are more in tune with each other, resulting in less cultural misunderstanding. Her hints cover a wide spectrum from nonverbal cues, sound effects and interjections, through manners, table talk, practical idioms, slang to the all important use of wit and improvisation in language (think the magnificient French film "Ridicule"). By explaining the French response to certain expressions used by an unsuspecting native American speaker, the student reader becomes aware of the nuance behind his conveyed mannerisms, his words, the intended meaning and actual interpretation of any of the numerous expressions detailed by Schorr. The text demystifies many all-important ideas like how the French use more words to convey one word ideas in English, the French idea of food and a meal, the way slang is interpreted more negatively when used by a non-native speaker and the very European way of expressing the positive while using negative expressions. Schorr unlocks the door to understanding this centuries-old civilization by illustrating that language is alive and changing through numerous examples that are gastronomical, historical, philosophical and above all uniquely French and hence somewhat alien to the average American listener and observer. She stresses that once realizatiion of what the recipient of your dialogue understands and interprets,dawns, the non-native will be better equipped to use the right phrases, expressions and gestures to ensure that the correct point is being transmitted.
"Tune Up Your French" is by no means a diatribe about language. On the contrary, the information for each tune-up or chapter is presented in the following easy-to-read manner: a preview, explanation, list of top ten expressins and some reheasal time to review.
The book includes a wonderful CD which runs for about an hour which contains listening and repeating of expressions; the male and female French speakers will review some of the text's highlights and then use dialogue to allow you to practice usage. Very enjoyable.
This book is not for the beginner. The student purchasing this book must be pretty well versed in French basics. Some of the phrases used as examples are not translated; others are. The dialogue portion of the CD is rapid fire (spoken as French is truly spoken) without translation and without repetition.
Nevertheless, I most whole-heartedly recommend this very readable and enjoyable departure from most language textbooks. I would love to see a "Tune Up Your French II" with another fun-to-listen-to CD. Tres Bien, Madame Schorr! Please, McGraw Hill, do a "Tune Up Your Italian" also, s'il vous plait!
Superb! April 25, 2005
57 out of 57 found this review helpful
I recently interviewed the author for Lansing Public Radio's BookTalk and have to put my praise for this book on-line. I studied French for eight years, won my high school's award and shook the French ambassador's hand, and do well in France or Quebec when I travel (after the first day or so of language shock), but it's always with the help of a new book to brush up my fluency. This book is the most original, entertaining, and helpful of any of the the ones I've bought over the years.
The author doesn't lecture or overwhelm you, but rather makes you feel you're sitting down to chat with a very good friend about how the French live, how they speak, and how you can best fit into that world while you travel. To that end, Schorr very intelligently shows you how to ask substantive questions in French to get people talking so that you can engage in a real conversation and learn from it. She warns you against trying to sound too hip by using inappropriate slang, which may come off as sounding phony. You'll learn slang terms that are acceptable and others that aren't (in varying degrees).
The author also ends with epigrammatic French phrases you can learn and embroider so as to manifest wit and style, which the French admire. It may sound intimidating, but it really isn't. What she's after is getting you to relax and try various methods of entering the culture as a vistor who can truly enjoy it. A woman in a store on the Ile St. Louis once complimented my French, asked where I was from (America? Hard to believe!) and then sagely observed that one couldn't really appreciate a culture without knowing its language). Tune Up Your French will take you down that road. It offers help across the board, but is especially informative about matters of food and dining, and is there anyplace else where the French are more unqiquely themselves? Best of all, the book is entertaining and funny without going for cheap jokes. You don't have to be contemplating a trip to France to enjoy this informative, smart, accessible book.
Wow! January 30, 2005
54 out of 55 found this review helpful
How can you speak American English without using "Wow?" Yet when we study foreign languages in school, we never learn how to say things like that. Do you know how to say "Yuck" in French? It's "Buerk!" That's the kind of fascinating and useful thing this book tells you. What the author calls a "tune-up" is really the best possible introduction to speaking French -- a truly original approach which emphasizes the sounds, the gestures, the drama of French speakers. It's taken me 20 years of living with a Frenchman to realize some of the things Natalie Schorr reveals offhandedly in this book. How I wish I'd learned French from her in the first place! All languages should be taught this way. A truly wonderful book.
Much more than a French language book! January 11, 2005
44 out of 45 found this review helpful
I love this book! Although my spoken French isn't bad, there are so many little things I've learned from skimming through this book -- for example, how to order a decaf espresso, what to say when someone is about to cut in front of you in line, or the fact that when giving a phone number, the French say the digits in pairs, whereas Americans say each number individually. The book is organized in chapters by topics, but because of its "top ten" format you can also open it at random and you're sure to learn something new and unexpected. Although it is written in a very amusing style, it's packed with useful information. A French friend who looked at it gave it her seal of approval, saying that the author really knew French expressions and customs. I keep the CD in my car and pop it in occasionally just for the fun of repeating some of the idioms and phrases along with the French speakers.
I've given this book to friends whose proficiency in French varied greatly and they've all raved about it. Highly recommended!
A very useful approach to spoken French idioms.... August 27, 2004
22 out of 22 found this review helpful
My spoken French is pretty good, but textbookish. I found Tune Up to be very useful and interesting, the material and idioms covered are actual phrases I can use and not quirky "slang" that one is better off not learning; in addition, the authors stress context, so you get a feel for nuance, how the idioms and phrases should be used. The audio CD is especially entertaining and a great help with pronunciation and comprehension. The French speakers are amusing as they whisper the correct answers...
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