French Short Stories for Beginners 10 Clever Short Stories to Grow Your Vocabulary and Learn French the Fun Way: 10 Clever Short Stories to Grow Your Vocabulary and Learn French the Fun Way + Phrasebook

By Christian Stahl

Do you know what's the most challenging issue when it comes to learning French? Finding realistic and non-boring reading material that is suitable for beginners. For this reason alone this book has been written. This book is entertaining, useful, and you won't be forced to search for words in a dictionary every couple of minutes.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Midealuck Publishing
• Release date: Oct 26, 2021
• ISBN: 9781739950286

Christian Stahl

www.shortstoriesforbeginners.com

Book preview

Learning French through short stories

Reading culturally interesting and humorous short stories to enhance your French is an easy way to improve your language skills. This book contains a selection of 10 short stories for beginners with a wide range of genres, all prepared specifically for French language learners.

This book provides modern stories from tales of espionage, to romances on cruise ships, sauna experiences to stories about prepper lifestyle, all written by a French linguist and ensuring you will have a great time while fine-tuning your French vocabulary and improving your comprehension. The content is intended mainly for elementary to intermediate level learners, but it will also be useful for more advanced learners as a way of practicing their reading skills and comprehension of the French language.

The stories have been arranged according to their degree of difficulty and each story is accompanied by a key vocabulary section, summaries in English and French, and story related exercises

How to use this book effectively

Each story is reasonably short and split into easily digestible chapters; the French paragraphs are followed by English parallel text. In our opinion it will be most beneficial if you read each story in English first, and then follow up by reading the French text. To get a better comprehension of the story, always read the summaries in English and French. Then review the key-vocabulary section and reread the story once more as a parallel text. After reading through a story a couple of times you'll notice that you understand an French version of the story as if it was written in your native tongue. Continue with the exercises that you find after each story.

Finally, at the end of this book, you should study the phrases and expressions that also includes a pronunciation guide.

The inherent advantages of learning by reading short stories

Over time, you will build an intuitive understanding of how French functions. This differs from a more theoretical understanding put together via learning rules and conceptual examples:

It’s more important to reach to finish the story without stopping, then to understand each and every word. The simple truth is that you won’t get everything your first time around. This is completely normal.

Follow our tips to get results fast

Vocabulary will be introduced to you at a reasonable pace, so you’re not overwhelmed with difficult words all at once. Here, you won’t have to look up every other word, but you can simply enjoy the story and absorb new words simply from the story’s context.

The French contained in here are written using easy-to-understand grammar and vocabulary that both those at the beginner and intermediate levels can understand, appreciate, and learn from.

Some stories are focused on dialogue. These stories contain loads of natural dialogue, so you can learn conversational French as you read. This is doubly beneficial as you will improve your speaking ability as well.

For our complete French short story selection including vocabulary section and audio see this book, available on most major book platforms

I. Je t’ai rencontré au sauna

I meet you at the spa

Monsieur Petit est un homme d’affaires. Il possède un petit restaurant dans une gare et y vend du poisson et des frites. Il a beaucoup de clients réguliers parce que la plupart de ses clients aiment ses plats. Après ses heures de travail il va souvent au Spa, pour se calmer et se relaxer. Il y a quelques temps M. Petit est retourné au sauna.

Mr. Petit is a businessman. He owns a small restaurant at a railway station where he sells fish and chips. He has a lot of regular guests because most of the customers like his food.

In the after-work hours he frequently goes to a spa to calm down and relax. Some time ago Mr. Petit returned to the sauna

Ce jour-là, la température du sauna mêlée aux odeurs de plantes semblait particulièrement élevée. M. Petit était déjà assis et transpirait sur le banc du sauna quand la porte s’ouvrit. Un homme entra. M. Petit le reconnu aussitôt. C’était un client.

That day the temperature of the herbal sauna seemed to be especially high. Mr. Petit had already been inside the sauna and sweating on the sauna bench when the door opened. A man came in. Mr. Petit recognised the man immediately. It was a customer.

Cependant, il n’aimait pas ce client. Une fois, le client l’avait dénoncé parce qu’il pensait que le dîner ne respectait pas les conditions d’hygiène. L’autre homme reconnu aussi M. Petit.

L’homme sourit: « Bonsoir M. Petit, comment allez-vous?»

However, he didn't like this customer. Once the customer had denounced him because he thought that the diner was dirty.

The other man also recognized Mr. Petit.

The man smiled: Good evening, Mr.Petit how are you?

«Tout va bien, merci», répondit M. Petit.

«Transpirer nettoie le corps», dit l’homme.

M. Petit en avait assez vu pour la journée et quitta le sauna. Il partit prendre une douche.

Cette fois-là, M. Petit prit une longue douche car il avait été contrarié par cet homme.

Everything is well, thank you.

Sweating cleans the body, said the man.

Mr. Petit had enough for the day and left the sauna. He went for a shower. This time Mr. Petit took a long shower, because he had gotten annoyed by the man

Après la douche, M. Petit est entré dans le vestiaire, une grande pièce avec beaucoup de casiers.

Les serviettes étaient suspendues à un crochet. M. Petit se sécha. La serviette était humide, mais il se sentait mieux maintenant.

After the shower Mr. Petit went into the changing room, a big room with lots of lockers. The towels were hanging on a hook. Mr. Petit toweled himself, the towel was wet but he felt better now.

M. Petit quitta lentement le sauna. Le client qu’il avait rencontré dans le