books/magasines

garethDT

I'm trying to improve my French and German before I start them both at AS in September and I was wondering if anyone could recommend any books or magasines which might help me.

I have a few old football magasines which I bought in France a little while ago and I can understand most of them, if not every word!

Will I be studying literature at A-Level and if so which books and how can I get hold of them?

Magazines and bandes dessinées are good. Not too much text, and support/ added interest from the images. Astérix, Lucky Luke, Spirou, are all good fun, and often have short articles. French magazines with general articles, recipes (imperatives!), horoscopes (future tense!) are all good value. Test your local library, then big bookshops.

Aitch

Reply 4

Phosphore is a great general magazine and it is pitched at A level standard. It also includes loads of articles that can give and insight into aspects of french culture if that is on your curriculum. I love it!

Reply 5

garethDT

OP

ok, thanks for the advise people. I'm currently frequenting a French language forum which is really improving my French, especially the reading aspect so really I just want more material to practice my reading.

In class once we watched the film 'Amelie' but obviously in a class environment you can never really concentrate properly on a film and it was over a year ago that I watched it so I might understand more now if I bought it. (only £6.99 in tesco's!).
German's going to be more difficult though, so far I haven't found any decent forums and my German vocab is not quite up to the same standard as French because at my school you didn't start German until year 8.

Reply 6

leannemarie

11

Well I took GCSE Spanish in 3years, and one year we barely did anything as there were too many people who wanted to drop it and out teacher was seriously ill. Just maintain your vocab by reading newspapers and listening to the radio etc etc...although I never actually did any of this and still don't...even though I really should!

Reply 7

Amelie is brilliant! It's my favorite film atm! BUY IT!

Reply 8

Richy Rich$$

Never really liked Amelie that much. I much prefer French film like Taxi, which is very funny, and Subway.

Reply 9

Taxi is very good! I watched it the other day, never heard if subway though

Reply 10

kellywood_5

17

I've never heard of Subway either, but Taxi was great and Amelie was pretty good too.

Reply 11

Richy Rich$$

Subway's directed by Luc Besson and it's quite old earlier '80s i think. Its a dark thriller about this man who escapes from this persons husband by hidiong out in the paris metro.

Did you watch Taxi in French? Was it just me or, did you find the french really hard to understand? Especially when the taxi driver was talking

Reply 12

subtitles! yeah! I don't pay attention to the french when I have subtitles. However, my copy of amelie has no subtitles, can get a bit confusing!

Reply 13

Dizzykiki

Yay! I love all those films! I adore Amélie and both the Taxi films, wasn't quite so sure about Subway but it was enjoyable nonetheless. I also really love Le Bossu and Le Placard - two very different films! We saw Le Bossu in class and I completely fell in love with it - it's just a really random historical-type adventure romance epic! Completely mad! Le Placard is by the same people who did Le Dîner des Cons (which I didn't think was that great) so has people like Gerard Depardieu in. It's about this accountant who's about to get fired so his neighbour persuades him to pretend to be gay so that it would look like discrimination. This leads to all sorts of random developments and some very funny scenarios. I know it sounds a bit weird but in my opinion, at least, it's definitely worth watching.

Reply 14

kellywood_5

17

Richy Rich$$

Subway's directed by Luc Besson and it's quite old earlier '80s i think. Its a dark thriller about this man who escapes from this persons husband by hidiong out in the paris metro.

Did you watch Taxi in French? Was it just me or, did you find the french really hard to understand? Especially when the taxi driver was talking

I thought they talked way too fast, and I think they used a fair bit of slang too. We watched it with subtitles though :smile:

Reply 15

etre et avoir was good too! Though that's not really a film film

Reply 16

Richy Rich$$

*steph 247*

etre et avoir was good too! Though that's not really a film film

Yeh i thought etre et avoir was good aswell. But its more like a documentary than a film. Les choristes is also a sweet film.

Reply 17

garethDT

OP