Karl C. Sandberg (1931–2000)

I borrowed this book from the local library and read about half of it, before ordering it from Amazon. It arrived yesterday. Like all the other reviewers, I love the book.

I had read Louise Selbert's excellent "Skills & Techniques for Reading French" earlier, and found Sandberg's book a good complement.

Sandberg's approach is very different from Selbert's.
Sandberg's book addresses graduate students who need to quickly acquire a reading knowledge of French to pass a language exam. I'm not a student, nor do I have to take exams. But I found the book helpful in enhancing my French reading skills. It uses a programmed approach. Instead of detailed exposition of a topic, it first gives tiny snippets of grammar & vocabulary, followed by short sentences in small exercises to illustrate the topics. These sentences are taken from long passages that appear later at the end of the chapter. By the time you get to these entire passages towards the chapter end, you would have virtually covered all the component sentences earlier via the small exercises earlier. This is the format of Sandberg's programmed methodology. And it works! My French proficiency is intermediate. I found my French reading ability moving a notch up, even having completed so far only slightly more than half of the book.

As other reviewers have noted, the book's price may deter some. For me, however, it is value for money. While some of the passages are pre-war, they are well chosen in terms of subject matter, depth and style.

I recommend it highly.… (mere)