French Reading Material

[Sublime Sunshine]

Well I'm looking to expand my french vocabulary and everyone says that reading is the best way to do this.

I was wondering if anyone had an ideas for books, magazines, websites, comic books and any other things that I could read to help diversify my vocabulary. I am reading Le Petit Prince at the moment, but don't restrict your ideas to that sort of medium, any ideas are appreciated.

[Daedalus]

Good thing to check out is freerice; if you choose the french language option it will give you words to learn up to a certain (not too complex) level.

Other books to check out include L'Étranger (the Stranger) by Albert Camus, which is quite simply written, and there are loads of other novels in the teenage/young adult section of french book stores if you're interested (or have access).

Other then that you can find here a catalog of french books, many of them classics, available online, though they may be difficult. In terms of magazines your teacher will almost definitely have some resources; you can also check out Le Monde every now and again, depending on how hard you find it.

gl

[larry]

Personally, for reading in another language I find interest is the most important thing: maybe it would be best for me to read "Bien-dire" (the magazine my French teacher recommends), but I prefer to order the kind of books I'd normally read off French Amazon (pretty reasonably priced too, though shipping's a pain), preferably towards the trashy spectrum. Even if reading whole books is harder than say, kid's books, I find it much easier to actually make myself actually read them. Plus it's an excuse for me to read sci-fi, fantasy, crime etc. and claim it as educational

Same goes for magazines, I suppose - find one about something you're interested in, the most important thing is just reading and seeing the grammar structures, basic vocabulary (conjunctions!). You could also try browsing blogs.

[United4Life]

I read the news articles on www.lefigaro.fr

Very useful and has helped me alot

[Sandwich]

I didn't do French but I was revising for Spanish and found parallel texts really helpful.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/French-short-stories-Nouvelles-Francaises/dp/0140265430

That kind of thing. I found it more enjoyable than reading the News (in the Spanish one, at least, they had some really good stories and writing in there!) and also very vocab expanding. I'd challenge myself to skim read and understand the 'foreign' page, then go back over it more thoroughly before reading the English. It really helped me, my reading improved and I found some pretty awesome phrases in there. There's no better way to improve than stretching yourself Also reading anything in the original language is invariably more beautiful than in translation (with the possible exception of The Leopard!).

[tootall2591]

Thank You, I have been looking for places to find French text to help me prepare for my French SL paper 1. All these resources were very helpful.

[ShineeLikeMe]

Try L'etranger. It's totally written in passe compase and imparfait

Also huis clos is good.

If youre daring try Le Pere Goriot. I'm reading it right now and I want to shoot myself in the foot

[Abdominal Procrastinator]

I don't know about others, but I find learning specific vocabulary lists much better if you want to EXPAND YOUR VOCAB. Not your reading comphrension skills. I would recommend pre-translated (human of course) texts with a language your're fluent in, so it's much easier to comprehend. By the way, OUP is releasing a French B course companion, but thats in mid next year I think.