When pronouns and prepositions were introduced in my second semester of Intro French I didn't feel like they were explained thoroughly enough in class or in the textbook and most importantly there weren't enough exercises - we didn't do a whole lot of practice. This is the reason I decided to start going through Practice Makes Perfect: French Pronouns and Prepositions - to get myself more comfortable and confident with this aspect of French grammar. I had already gone through the Spanish version of this book and it was VERY helpful. (I was at about the same high-beginner level in Spanish as I was with French when I picked up the French version) So I expected this to be just as good. (I've actually gone through maybe 4 or 5 other Practice Makes Perfect Books, all Spanish- and I rated them all 5 stars- this is the first time I'm a bit disappointed with a book in the series).
One of the biggest issues I had was the fact that although there's a French to English glossary (which isn't that great) there isn't an English to French glossary. Although the Spanish version of the book didn't have glossaries at the back, there were many words translated throughout the book in brackets - words that aren't the most common. This was done on almost every page of exercises. This is much more helpful than the glossary that was in this book. You'll find many basic words in the glossary, but often less common words are not included (for example, I'd rather see words like "périmé" (out-of-date), "partager" (to share) and "persil" (parsley) [these were in the exercises but not the glossary] under "P" in the glossary than the more common words like "porte" (door) and "plus" (more). There are many many examples though, I wrote down several words that I had to look up. I suggest to beginner or intermediate students of French who plan on going through this book to go to my review of this book on amazon.com and check under it where it says "comments" - I made a list of several words that were not included in the glossary of this book. If you want, copy, paste, and print the list. It will likely make going through the book easier. Sometimes it's not so important to know some vocabulary in order to do the exercises, but if you're like me, you'll want to understand everything you're reading. It is important to know words when translating from English to French though - like I said, there's no English to French glossary.
Another thing I didn't like about the book was that, often, when you have to translate (from English to French) using a future tense, you don't know which tense you're supposed to use (and of course you want it to match up with the answers in the answer key).
The answer key gives a single answer for each exercise when there are in many cases 2 or more answers that are correct.
Sometimes, when you're asked to translate questions from English to French, you're not told which way to pose the question (inversion/est-ce que).
There should be more practice with using plaire, manquer, and other verbs like that, because the way they're used confuses a lot of students. This was brought up in the book and explained but there is only one exercise for this with 10 questions (exercise 6-7)
The prepositions portion of the book could have been better. It was a bit disappointing. There is so much information - when there is so much stuff that's brought up - there should be many exercises, perhaps spaced out (it would be better if you were given a small amount of information on certain verbs and prepositions that follow them and then exercises, then another bit of info followed by exercises, etc, instead of just a huge amount of information and a few exercises right after).
On to what I liked about the book. It's fairly well organized, especially the pronouns portion of the book, which covers 14 of the 18 chapters. Overall there are a good amount of exercises (especially, once again, in the pronouns part). There are often enough examples, although sometimes you're only given examples in order to do an exercise, instead of an explanation followed by examples. There's an answer key at the back. The fact that the book is cheap is a plus. I don't know of any other decent workbook on French pronouns and prepositions, so at least this exists.
If I didn't have to look up so many words it would have saved me some time.
The book is worth getting despite what it's lacking. I don't know of any other good workbooks on French pronouns and prepositions. I'm definitely more confident with French pronouns but not as much with prepositions, after going through this book.
I'd recommend it to students with at least one semester of French up to maybe 2 to 3 years.
