French Essentials for Dummies, 2nd ed., by Laura K Lawless

by Laura K Lawless

and Zoe Erotopoulos, PhD

The first edition of French Essentials for Dummies was published in 2011. My name is on it because more than a third of its content was taken from my book Intermediate French for Dummies, but I wasn’t involved in selecting that content, organizing it, editing, or anything else, so I have never considered it to be one of my books.

The second edition is very different. I went through every word, rewriting and reorganizing and making it 10 times better, and am now proud to call it my ninth book.

French Essentials for Dummies, 2nd ed. is a smallish book (5½ x 8½") that covers essential French grammar. There’s no pronunciation, very little vocabulary, and no exercises.* It’s not really for beginners: it’s a reference book that you can dip into to get an overview of or a reminder about verb conjugations, adverbial pronouns, or whatever other intermediate-ish grammar you need to learn or brush up on. And while there are of course plenty of examples, the lessons don’t go into detail about all the rules and all the exceptions; it’s just the essentials.

Chapter 1	Getting Down to Basics (numbers, dates, time, parts of speech)
Chapter 2	Putting Grammar to Work (gender, plurals, possession, pronouns)
Chapter 3	Here and Now: The Present Tense
Chapter 4	Describing and Comparing with Flair (adjectives, adverbs)
Chapter 5	Connecting with Prepositions
Chapter 6	Asking and Answering Questions
Chapter 7	Using the Past
Chapter 8	Looking Toward the Future
Chapter 9	Recognizing Verb Moods (imperative, subjunctive, conditional)
Chapter 10	Ten Important Verb Particularities
Appendix	Verb Charts