Review by mpsmaster -- Idiom Attack Vol. 1 Everyday Livi...

[mpsmaster]

[Following is a volunteer review of "Idiom Attack Vol. 1 Everyday Living (French Edition)" by Peter Liptak.]

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4 out of 4 stars

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It’s well known that one needs to know an average of 10000 words to be fluent in any language, but this doesn’t mean that you will be safe against the biggest predator of English speakers: Idioms. A bunch of words, that one may know very well, but when put together they paint a whole different picture. Have you ever had problems with idioms? Even if you are a native English speaker, ever happened to you a situation where you heard or read a phrasal expression and thought: what is this about?

Idiom Attack Vol. 1: Everyday Living (French Edition) by Peter N. Liptak, Matthew Douma and Jay Douma came to address this issue. This book was made with a good heart. The authors created a series of books intended to make an easy way for Asians (Korea, China and Japan) to deal with this “idiom problem”. These books received many awards through decades of service provided. The present book, for native French speakers, came about with the help of a French citizen translator that lives in the US and wanted foreigners with the same predicament to have better means to communicate and understand the English language.

What is in store for you? It’s offered to you a user-friendly way to learn 300 idioms in 25 thematically divided chapters, which makes it simple for you to go about exactly what you need for each situation. The method is a three-step training process that divides each chapter. You learn the idioms, answer a fill-in-the-blank worksheet, read and answer a few questions about a given story. Every 5 chapters you have a crossword game to help you to review and retain what you have learned, as simple as that.

The translation of the idioms is done in a less literal approach making the meaning easy to grasp in your native language. You also have some examples of synonyms and antonyms; some minor grammar references like hyphenation or not of a particular idiom; use of “one” as a pronoun and the proper understanding of “someone” in phrasal expressions. The authors also provide a website where you can download some audio files to help you with the pronunciation.

I recommend this book to intermediate and advanced students of English, however, since a simple language and an easy method is used, I also recommend it for high beginners to give a try. It can be used by students and teachers in classroom lessons, as well as students by themselves. The book is intended to be a supplement, for more depth knowledge of certain parts of the language (grammar, for example) you need other specific books.

The book is flawlessly edited and there is nothing that I dislike about it, so I’m pleased to rate it 4 out of 4 stars. I particularly like the stories, because they are made to give a moral lesson, induce fruitful thinking and are completely formed with the idioms you are studying. Another nice feature is that there are many meme-like illustrations throughout the book, for visual people (like me) it’s easy to remember what each chapter was about (like the one with the devil teacher).

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Idiom Attack Vol. 1 Everyday Living (French Edition)
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[Kelyn]

I'm fond of idioms, especially their origins. How did they come to exist? Are they regional? Dialectical? Given this, I understand how difficult it would be for a non-English speaker to interpret something that doesn't really mean what it literally says. This book sounds like a helpful and user-friendly guide for learners of the English language. I'm sure it will see much use. Thanks for the review!

[mpsmaster]

I'm fond of idioms, especially their origins. How did they come to exist? Are they regional? Dialectical? Given this, I understand how difficult it would be for a non-English speaker to interpret something that doesn't really mean what it literally says. This book sounds like a helpful and user-friendly guide for learners of the English language. I'm sure it will see much use. Thanks for the review!

Thank you for the visit! The book is great, and if you do know English, but not French, be sure that you will learn a lot as well. Next time I will have tea and cookies for such nice words.