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Last week we learned the sad news that Muriel Lauvige had passed away.  Muriel was the author of an innovative book for helping both youngsters and adults overcome the challenges of learning a new language.

Called “This is NOT a normal FRENCH book”, the book was featured on our site a couple of years ago. As a show of support for Muriel, her husband and her baby daughter we would like to help her family and friends get as many people as possible to buy her book, which can be purchased at Amazon, The Book Edition and Payot.

Written and illustrated by Muriel, the 56-page paperback was based on years of research and insight into language learning and education. Muriel had over 15 years experience of teaching French and working on education projects around the world with organizations such as Alliance Française and the United Nations.

With its own unique blend of text and comic visuals, this highly colorful publication does not fall into the usual category of books for learning French - indeed each page has been carefully designed to make French as easy and fun to learn as possible. It is filled with comic characters and ready-to-use sentences, and contains just 500 of what Muriel's research led her to conclude are some of the most high frequency words in French.

Each chapter in the book covers a typical situation that people may come across on a daily basis including: ordering at a restaurant, shopping in a market, working in an office, meeting the doctor, making an appointment over the phone, and talking to a neighbour. The chapters are made up mainly of dialogue between two characters using the present tense and a list of vocabulary for each dialogue. There are a couple of teaser chapters on using French for past and future situations.

sampleillustrations1

Asked a couple of years ago why she decided to produce the new book, Muriel told knowitall.ch, “I decided to explore new and creative ways to teach when I was coaching students one-on-one at a beginner level. To be frank, most students came to me to learn because they had been traumatized by grammar books and strict teachers and I was their last attempt at French”.

She added, ““I am strongly convinced that you can have fun learning a language and comic books are the perfect medium for that. Learning French does not need to be a chore!”

The book was reviewed by Dr. Katharina Schnitzspahn, a specialist in cognitive and memory development at the University of Geneva, who said: “The combination and repetition of pictures and important words and phrases makes memorizing and understanding the material better… I wish this book would have already existed when I started learning French.”

John-Paul Flintoff, a journalist and writer for the UK’s Sunday Times also commented, “In the book, Muriel does something the renowned linguist Michel Thomas never did - combining the latest insights from neuro linguistics with the great French tradition of illustrated books for adults to make learning French both easy and playful.”

What fun would it be to learn French without hearing the beautiful accents to go along with it? Muriel not only developed the curriculum and illustrated all the artwork in the book, she also recorded all the dialogues which come free with the book!

motdujour

 

Muriel Lauvige
“This is NOT a normal FRENCH book”
Available on Amazon, The Book Edition and Payot

UPDATE 4 April 2016: To mark the occasion of Muriel's birthday on Monday, Vincent, her husband, has sent us the link to this amazing tribute to her, entitled "In Memory of Mon Amour".