Practice Makes Perfect: Complete French Grammar

This book by Annie Heminway contains lots of grammar drills, offering excellent opportunities for practice to people seeking to refine their skills.

I’ve used Practice Makes Perfect: Complete French Grammar twice. Right after I went through it a second time, McGraw-Hill came out with a new edition (2012), and I don’t know how different that one is from my 2008 edition. I can tell you that in my experience, their Practice Makes Perfect books don’t change that much from edition to edition, and based on a comparison of the tables of contents in the two editions, I would say that’s likely here as well—but you never know.

Complete French Grammar is in any case not strictly for a beginner; in the introduction, the book says “advanced beginner and intermediate student.”

Take that seriously! The vocabulary is oddly advanced throughout Heminway’s book, and a little insecurity-causing. On a word list starting on page 115, I was told how to say “to caramelize” (caraméliser), “to grind” (broyer), “to braise” (braiser), “to scale fish” (écailler), and so on. That’s a little too much even for an intermediate student.

If you can manage the level, then you will enjoy the good and numerous examples, clear explanations, and vocabulary lists (such as one on computers on pages 105-106) that are manageable and well-integrated into the grammar work. 

I don’t know why Chapter 20 is “Articles and Nouns.” Isn’t that kind of late?