La Grammaire pour le dire was written with two basic principles in mind: minimizing grammatical jargon and maximizing the use of authentic French through exposure to some of the best examples of French and Francophone literature. Wherever possible, the exercises are built on the use of excerpts from well-crafted literary texts that clearly exhibit the grammatical structures which are covered in a typical French grammar review course.
Designed for threshold courses to the advanced study of French, La Grammaire pour le dire reviews the verb conjugation concepts of voice, mood, and tense. The book also covers determiners, adjectives and adverbs, comparatives and superlatives, prepositions, conjunctions, and pronouns. Students can review direct and indirect reported speech and learn literary tenses.
La Grammaire pour le dire enhances the language learning experience by giving students exposure to the language as it is used by native speakers. The literary excerpts not only model grammatical structures, but also convey cultural knowledge. The book is well-suited to third-year French grammar review and is also an excellent supplement for courses in composition and literary analysis.
Edward Ousselin taught French at the Institut de Touraine in Tours, France before moving to the United States and earning his Ph.D. at Ohio State University. He has been teaching intensive French grammar review courses at Western Washington University for several years. He has written nearly thirty articles on French culture, film, and literature, served as a contributing author for the textbook Liaisons: An Introduction to French, and translated and annotated a dual-language version of Marcel Proust's Les Plaisirs et les jours. He is the author of The Invention of Europe in French Literature and Film, and since 2010 has served as editor in chief of theFrench Review, a scholarly journal published by the American Association of Teachers of French.
