Aims

Using French Vocabulary is designed to provide students of French with a comprehensive and structured vocabulary book which can be used at all levels of undergraduate French programmes. To the dual or single honours student, it offers broad coverage of the concrete and abstract vocabulary relating to the physical, cultural, social, commercial and political environment, as well as exposure to commonly encountered technical terminology. While the principal target audience is the university or college student, many of the units could also be readily adapted to and integrated into ‘Language for Special Purposes’ courses.

Vocabulary acquisition is often a fraught issue for both teachers and learners of languages. No language teacher would dispute the importance of setting realistic and measurable learning objectives. However, while the many excellent language textbooks which have been published in recent years provide a wealth of authentic target language materials and co-ordinated exercises, the student's lexical exposure often remains limited to the vocabulary which ‘crops up’ in the texts and recordings studied in class. Many students devote considerable time and effort to the compilation of vocabulary notebooks in order to supplement classwork and to fill gaps in their knowledge, but, by its nature, such supplementary work is very time-consuming and somewhat erratic in its outcomes. Furthermore, students are often disheartened not only by the sheer labour involved in vocabulary notation, but also by their uncertainty regarding what they are expected to know and what they can expect of themselves at a given stage in their university or college course.