Thank you, Dr Allswell Eno and Literally PR, for sending me an advance reader copy in exchange for my honest review.

When I was invited to join the book review tour for Dr Eno's book, I didn't hesitate. As a bilingual family with English/Italian we are always looking for great resources to help multilingual families and make their journey easier. 

This book is for next level French from GCSE or A level upwards. It should be used as a reference book and serves as a useful resource for native speakers raising bilingual children. 

Author Biography

Dr Eno was born in Greenwich, South East London. He trained and practised hospital medicine and worked for 25 years in general practice.

His love of French began at school and as an adult when an increasing number of French speaking patients came to his practice he was encouraged to improve his language skills. This learning experience made him aware of the need for an easy to use, practical guide to Intermediate French.

Dr Eno is also a vigorous campaigner on the subject of racial terminology and equality in relation to people of African heritage around the world. Why are some population groups still referred to by their colour and not their heritage? What can we do to change this? Find out more about the campaign here.

My review

Dr Eno’s aim is to provide something that teases out English sentence structures which English speakers struggle to translate in French. He wants to unlock the language so English speakers are not stuck with high school level language skills. 

He has created an impressive toolkit on how to express yourself in French in a myriad of everyday themes. 

This is a large book to be used as a reference, to be dipped in and out of when you need to look something up on a specific topic.

Who should read this?

There are, in my opinion, several different audiences for this book. For example, adults such as my husband who lived in France for an Erasmus year. His French is almost fluent and he covers the French market for his job. However, there are times when you can’t fully express yourself as you would in your native language and need support. 

Useful phrases found in the book which demonstrate this type of conversation depth are:

• Do you realise the significance of this?

• Which means we’re on to a winner/ on the right track/ should stay put

• The dispute involves the ownership of ___

For an adult like myself who studied French to GCSE the book is ideal for making conversations more accurate to real events such as: 

• I planned to catch my train this morning but it has been cancelled owing to bad weather/ a strike

As you can see these are a step up from the usual language books or courses where you generally cover standard topics like holidays, family and pets. These give much greater meaning to your phrases.

Lastly for us as parents raising bilingual children, the striking observation is how useful it could be for multilingual families. 

If you are raising children with French and English this book gives you hundreds of sentences which can be used with your child and will enhance and develop their French to another level. 

When our children were little we would write out a ‘word of the day’ each week and try and encourage us all to use and remember it. 

Now they are 11 and 8 years old we have moved on to five sentences a week which we chat about over breakfast, dinner or whenever we have a moment together. 

For those with a target language of French, here you have ready made sentences to use when discussing many different topics. 

Examples I’ve taken from the book are: 

• The idea came to me from…

• You’ve done very well/Takes some doing

• I can’t tell the difference

• Be nice to each other

• Which do you prefer?

As you can see these are all phrases you could use/ teach a primary age child if you are trying to reinforce French and equip them with the types of sentences which you don’t find in a school setting. 

We are often told that Spanish is the emerging and necessary language, I’ve been hearing this since I was applying to university, a very long time ago! However years later French is still a useful and desirable language. 

There are 300 million French speakers worldwide. French is the world’s 5th most spoken language and the 2nd most learned language. In Africa, 59% of people speak French daily. 

We could obviously talk at length about the benefits of learning another language. However, now our children are learning French at school we’ve noticed they pick it up relatively easily. This is not due to some superior intelligence! They just aren’t afraid to make mistakes. They notice patterns and don’t see learning a language as something unattainable.

They have learnt two languages through continuous exposure just as we all did with our first languages and we are all able to learn another.

So if you’d like to make it easier to bring clear French/English sentences into your family and home, this book should be beside you as a reference. 

From young children, GCSE studies, to adults at work or on holiday. This will be a key resource you use time and time again.