French Essentials For Dummies

New reading series brings foreign language acquisition into the 21st century

While the world produces more and more reading material each year, from magazines to newspapers to websites, why are most language learners still relying on contrived texts and classic literature for language acquisition? Providing entertaining contemporary texts in the original language, the Better Reading Language series is for those who want to brush up on a foreign language.

With the authentic materials provided in this series, readers will be able to peruse a Latin Grammys write-up in Spanish, a feature on Alain Ducasse's favorite recipes in French, or a review of a Milan fashion show in Italian. Readings on everything from music and sports to cinema and contemporary family life are arranged in increasing difficulty within chapters. Along the way, learners will find instruction and exercises to help develop improved reading speed, comprehension, and vocabulary.

Unfortunately, just because a language is beautiful doesn't mean that it's easy to learn. Although French has many things in common with English, French has had many, many centuries to evolve into the language it is today, which means it's had all that time to become more complex. That's where French For Dummies can help. Written in partnership with the language experts at Berlitz, this book can give you what you need for basic communication in French.

French For Dummies covers the following topics and more:

• Basic pronunciation and gestures
• The nuts and bolts of French grammar
• Meeting and greeting in French
• Situations in which you can use French: Making small talk, dining out, shopping, and talking on the phone
• Traveling to France: Dealing with French currency, staying at a hotel, and getting around town
• Top Ten lists on ways to pick up French quickly, things you should never say in French, favorite French expressions, and important French holidays to remember.
• Appendixes with verb conjugation tables, as well as a French mini-dictionary

French For Dummies also comes with a CD that has audio transcriptions of all the exercises in the book, so that you can actually hear the French pronunciations.

Become a pro using French pronouns and prepositions

This volume in the bestselling Practice Makes Perfect series treats French pronouns and prepositions systematically in a workbook/text format. Containing concise, user-friendly explanations with many practice exercises, Practice Makes Perfect: French Pronouns and Prepositions helps you develop your knowledge of how and why pronouns and prepositions are used, and, more important, how to incorporate them into everyday conversations.

Moby-Dick; or, The Whale is an 1851 novel by Herman Melville. Considered to be one of the Great American Novels and a treasure of world literature, the story tells the adventures of wandering sailor Ishmael, and his voyage on the whaleship Pequod, commanded by the brooding Captain Ahab. Ishmael soon learns that Ahab has one purpose on this voyage: to seek out and take revenge against Moby Dick, a ferocious, enigmatic white sperm whale that crippled him and destroyed his boat in a previous encounter.

After hard luck and heartbreak, Sunny finally finds a place to call home—in the middle of an Afghanistan war zone. There, the thirty-eight-year-old serves up her American hospitality to the expats who patronize her coffee shop, including a British journalist, a “danger pay” consultant, and a wealthy and well-connected woman. True to her name, Sunny also bonds with people whose language and landscape are unfamiliar to most Westerners, but whose hearts and souls are very much like our own: the maternal Halajan, who vividly recalls the days before the Taliban and now must hide a modern romance from her ultratraditional son; and Yazmina, a young Afghan villager with a secret that could put everyone’s life in jeopardy. In this gorgeous first novel, New York Times bestselling author Deborah Rodriguez paints a stirring portrait of a faraway place where—even in the fog of political and social conflict—friendship, passion, and hope still exist. 
 
Originally published as A Cup of Friendship
 
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The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930) is a collection of twelve short stories about a detective which was first published in 1892.

Mermaids Classics, an imprint of Mermaids Publishing brings the very best of old classic literature to a modern era of digital reading by producing high quality books in ebook format. All of the Mermaids Classics epublications are reproductions of classic antique books that were originally published in print format, mostly over a century ago and are now republished in digital format as ebooks. Begin to build your collection of digital books by looking for more literary gems from Mermaids Classics.