French Workbook For Dummies

Introduction 1

Part 1: The Building Blocks of French 5

Chapter 1: Getting to Know You 7

Chapter 2: Understanding Parts of Speech and Bilingual Dictionaries 23

Chapter 3: Figuring Out Nouns and Articles 41

Chapter 4: Showing Up and Owning Up: Demonstratives and Possessives 59

Chapter 5: The 4-1-1 on Numbers, Dates, and Time 75

Part 2: The Here and Now: Writing in the Present 95

Chapter 6: Right Here, Right Now: The Present Tense 97

Chapter 7: Sorting Out Pronominal Verbs: Idioms, Oneself, and Each Other 123

Chapter 8: Asking and Answering Questions 139

Chapter 9: Just Say No: The Negative 157

Chapter 10: "To Be" or "Being" Is the Question: Infinitives and Present Participles 171

Part 3: Writing with Panache: Dressing Up Your Sentences 187

Chapter 11: Describing and Comparing with Flair: Adjectives and Adverbs 189

Chapter 12: An Ode to Prepositions 217

Chapter 13: Getting a Hold on Pronouns 233

Part 4: Just Do It, and Now You've Done It: Commands and Past Tenses 249

Chapter 14: I Command You: The Imperative 251

Chapter 15: It's All in the Past: Passé Composé 265

Chapter 16: When the Past Isn't Perfect: The Imparfait Tense 281

Part 5: The Part of Tens 299

Chapter 17: Ten (or so) Essential French Phrases 301

Chapter 18: Ten Celebratory French Expressions 307

Part 6: Appendixes 311

Appendix A: Verb Charts 313

Appendix B: Verbs with Prepositions 323

Appendix C: English-French Dictionary 327

Appendix D: French-English Dictionary 335

Index 343