I'm not sure if there was an issue with my file but some of this seemed to be a bit glitchy - at the start there was supposed to be I assume a list of words but it was written like:
"noble prison uru gent attitattittttt e patiencce
concert terrible club normal reste aurtt ant courrrage exxcellent signattt e intelligient prp obrr able"

and there was nothing afterwards to acknowledge the typos and nonsense. It was rather off putting and I ended up skimming rather than reading cover to cover. I've chosen to still review as my decision to skim rather than DNF allowed me to see how useful this book could be to me in physical format and I have chosen to add it to my list of books to buy. I hope it helps me improve my french!

An excellent introduction to the French language, clearly and logically presented. A good format for beginners or those looking to refresh their skills.

Thank you NetGalley and publisher for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I studied GCSE French years ago and requested this book to learn more in a very easy to understand format

I studied french at high school, though I will not reveal how long ago that was.... I found Paul Noble's method simple and easy to use. It helped me to rebuild the vocabulary and grammar I thought was lost. It is an easy book to use and is very good at language recovery and building confidence. An ideal book to build or refresh.

It will travel with me when I visit France.

Thank you for a free copy of this book in return for an honest review.

Remarkable learning techniques. I will be recommending this book to anyone interested in learning French. I'll even recommend it to those who aren't. For those who gave up on learning French due to poor models of study in school, I recommend that you pick this book up and read it. You will not be disappointed.

Marvellous techniques, really grateful to have stumbled upon this as I choose to revive French. Bravo.

Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC.

Very clever idea for learning a language.
I enjoyed using this book as a refresher course for my GCSE level French.
I think it would work best as a hard copy version though.

After previously reading Unlocking Italian I was interested in reading this one to help with French. As with the Italian book It encourages a little each day and it will Most likely stick rather than memorising lots of vocabulary. Although knowing vocab is very important I do like the concept of this. My French accent is terrible but having the pronunciation in brackets has really really helped with that. I find these books make you want to read and keep Going. Sometimes language books can feel like a hard slog but this is so easy to read and you find you have learnt so much without so much effort. I found this to be an easy and effective way of learning sentence structure and grammar I find the easiest way to learn a language is by being around it.. Reading a little of this book each day will certainly help. It is simple but effective. I highly recommend it. I would say it is aimed at beginners/intermediate level.

Reading and using this book was a great way to get into a new language. The techniques are simple and straightforward, the phonetic breakdown of words was really useful and it took the tension out of learning. A great resource for anyone learning the language from children to adults. I highly recommend this book!!!

I am currently in the process of trying to learn French, and this is the perfect book for beginners like me. I found it accessible, which is something language books can struggle to be. Highly recommended.

Thanks to Netgallery for the chance to read this in exchange for an honest review.

I am in the process of learning French using one of the well-known phone apps, and I found that this book supplemented that perfectly.

It is a useful way to teach yourself a new language, and I really found the phonetic manner of showing the correct pronunciation to be very useful.

Having read many books with snippets of French sandwiched between English, I have become interested in French for some time. I have learnt some French in Duolingo, but I was interested to see what it would be like to read a book like this one that has an emphasis on getting a basic grasp of the language in a simple manner.

What I liked best was the simple pronunciations under the French words that made them easier to pronounce. Repetition of basic French phrases also gave enough space to practice and remember said phrases without memorising them.

The straightforward and non-cluttered layout of the book also made it easy to concentrate and read through. This book is a nice introduction of useful French phrases for beginners. Even so, I would recommend listening to some French audio of sorts to immerse yourself in the language and to learn how to pronounce certain French words more accurately.

This book is absolutely fantastic, a must for those wanting to learn French!

Learning another language is something that I have wanted to do for a while. After having to do a language at GCSE, and meeting a range of people who are multilingual, I was finally able to get around to some serious studying in lockdown.

However, as much as the plethora of apps available are fun and accessible, staring at a screen got tiring and I found it too easy to just put my phone in a different room and ignore the persistent green birds notifications and mild threats.

Enter this book on NetGalley. A fun and intriguing approach to language learning, this really worked for me. The sections are excellently separated to make learning easier and everything is relevant to a new learner - no random unnecessary details. I also love the relaxed approach, from the start pressure memorisation is discouraged in favour of a learn it by passive repetition approach, something which makes learning much less stressful, and actually increases the amount of knowledge that you are able to learn and rertain.

An overall fantastic book, highly recommend.

I’m in the process of learning French with a well known app and as great as that is I felt I needed something else to help with the learning process.

Unlocking French has been great, I hated learning French in high school but this book doesn’t lecture at you, it takes you through everything step by step and goes over everything several times and in different ways to show you how phrases are constructed. It is a fab resource.

If you are just starting out with the language I’d recommend this.

This is a great companion for those who are looking to learn French. I have been using this alongside an online course and was lucky to grab a copy from NetGalley for a review, finding it is good to use as a reference point for a beginner and helps build on what you have learnt as you progress through the book.
Well recommended for any beginner or intermediate who is looking to learn a new language.

This book uses a really clever and novel approach to learning a language. Paul Noble quickly gets you speaking useful phrases in French rather than the not so useful phrases you may have learnt on a traditional French course.

The book starts with explaining to you just how many words are very similar in French to English and how we can use simple rules to move from one language to another (in most cases).

This is a book you have to work through from the beginning, page by page, it's is structured in particular way to aid learning. Each chapter slowly builds up a multicomponent phrase. As you go through the chapter, the author asks you to cover the answers written in blue with a bookmark or piece of card, to get your brain working and so that you actually work through the multiple micro-tasks. Each answer in French has a pronunciation guide as well as the actual written answer. There's no active memorisation required but the use of spaced repetition gets you effortlessly remembering how to say all sorts of different phrases.

At the end of each chapter are increasingly long word/phrase lists that the author encourages you to keep going through until you only get 3 wrong. That sounds hard, but the way you're taught to put phrases together and the spaced repetition actually makes this much easier than it sounds. Noble also reminds you to not try and do too much and that if it takes all week to get through the word list, that's ok.

You start learning how to put together the phrase "I spent the weekend in Paris and it was lovely" and end with being able to hold a conversation including things like "Yes, I feel like going back to Paris but I’m scared of flying, so I’m planning to take the Eurostar." Unusually you actually start using the past tense before the present one, but it makes sense when you think about the kind of things you usually want to talk about.

There are no long verb conjugation tables instead there are really useful tips like how to make an educated guess if a noun is feminine or masculine, and ways to remember how French phrases are put together. For example, "when your letter arrived" in English is "when your letter is arrived" if you literally translated the French. Similarly, "I need" in English, is literally translated from the French as "I have need of".

The book ends with ideas on where to go next as this book really is just a stepping stone to further learning although a really useful one. It definitely builds confidence and makes you realise learning a new language does not have to be as difficult as many courses make it. School may have you put off learning languages for life, but this book shows it doesn’t have to be that dull and difficult! I will definitely look up Noble’s audio course as this way of learning does seem much more sensible and useful than the usual ways!

Whether you are totally new to French, learnt a little at school but not used it since, or know some French but don’t feel like you know anything actually useful, this is a great little book to get you going and feeling confident about learning and starting to Speak in French.

Magnifique! What a brilliant new method for learning French. Paul guides and encourages the reader though different grammatical points whilst reassuring them that they already know plenty of French. I studied French at uni so perhaps had a bit of a head start but I’ve definitely never come across such a lovely and easy to understand textbook. Thanks Paul!

I’ve listened to Paul Nobles audiobooks and wanted to try en ebook too to see how I fared with the different format. He makes things easy and I find his approach to languages logical and easy to take on, I’m nowhere near conversational yet but feel like I can grasp things better and I understand what I’m saying and the sentence structure.

What a lovely way to teach French. Many years ago I did my first year university French and hated it, i have to say that I enjoyed this book . And right the way through I could almost here Paul actually standing in front of me teaching me. The book is so personable, so easy to follow and does not start in the typical manner of rote learning verbs and decomposition. The method is to use a slow, but very methodical , repetitive sentences to show how easy it is to learn French. The beginning is not daunting by saying how many words an English speaker already knows . The reader starts in a very positive approach which continues throughout.
I look forward to seeing my French friends next and demonstrating how much more confident I am now. However I will go through this book once more before I go visiting. A book and method that would highly recommend to anyone who wants to refresh their language skills or simply learn French anew.

A very useful book. I wanted to refresh my French and I found this book very useful.
It's recommended to whoever want to learn some French or refresh their knowledge.
Highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine