can anyone recommend a basic French textbook for my Year 9 son

[sincitylover]

I really need to try and coach my son in French this holiday . He is 14 and just finished Year 9 and just hasn't seemed to grasp the basics in French. He has to carry on to take it at GCSE level (think it's possibly part of the European Bacculauareate).

I learnt French in the traditional way - ie by learning the basic grammar first as the building blocks and progressing that way. They don't seem to learn that way any more (old gimmer emoticon) and subsequently he doesn't seemed to have grasped the basics after three years .

I thought if I did this he might just get a bit more of out of it and the penny might drop.

Thanks

I have posted on this subject before. My ds has just finished year 8 and his French is appalling . They seem to do a sort of "holiday French" course and not rote learning of verbs. Everything they learn appears to be in the first person, so they can order in a cafe etc but couldn't possibly describe the act of two persons in the corner ordering two coffees. Grrrrrrrrrrr.

Anyway, others on here have suggested the Galore Park books. I have them in my basket on Amazon but haven't yet hit the "buy" button as a) I'm not entirely sure which level to pick and b) I know ds would rather drink three buckets of cold sick rather than do French in the summer holidays - especially with me as I have zero patience.

Assimil, the good old fashioned way. Worked wonders for me, but you have to stick with it, little and often. Depending on what the damage is, I would start from the beginning with Assimil and use GCSE revision book when you are done with the first Assimil book.

I have just bought the Heinemann A level revision book from Amazon.
It has all the stuff that was basic O level when I did it.
It explains a topic - eg regular verbs in present tense and then has lots of short practice exercises to reinforce the point. The next topic is then irreg present tense verbs. It is a bit dry, but nice and systematic.

Thanks for the suggestions and glad it's not only me Gramercy.

It beats me how schools are allowed to do this if it clearly doesn't work properly. He's above average in everything else although I wouldn't say he has a natural aptitude/ear for languages.

I recently bought this www.cgpbooks.co.uk/pages/productDetail.asp?book=FHS43 for DD1.

She is also going into year 10, although doing French out of choice and not struggling. So bought the book more for her own reference over the next two years, rather than for coaching now.

They have already started the GCSE syllabus, and she says the book is very relevant.

Skeleton French form Galore Park