Practice Makes Perfect: Spanish Verb Tenses Review

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(More customer reviews)This book and the other Practice-Makes-Perfect workbook by Dorothy Richmond ("Spanish Pronouns and Prepositions") are the best Spanish books I've ever used. I just got back from 2 years in the Peace Corps in Honduras and I studied these books every day. They REALLY helped me learn more Spanish! In addition to the concise, easy-to-understand instruction sections, there's tons of exercises to do (with the correct answers in the back of the book) and as I did the exercises, I picked up all kinds of things that I'd been wondering how to say. I also liked the verb workbook a lot because it went way beyond the present tense, all the way to the subjunctive uses of "haber" and other more advanced things I really wanted to know. (This book is especially great if you already know some Spanish because you need some vocabulary to do the exercises, unless you don't mind looking up lots of words in the dictionary.) I highly recommend this book!

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A workbook to help you master Spanish tenses

Some things just take a lot of practice to learn, and verb tenses are one of them! Practice Makes Perfect: Spanish Verb Tenses goes beyond the scope of many other books that deal with verbs. Typical verb books often present little more than charts of conjugations with perhaps some mechanical exercises that do little to help you really master when and why a particular verb tense should be used.

Spanish Verb Tenses fills this void by offering clear, concise, and at times, humorous explanations that pinpoint why a certain tense works in a given situation. The hundreds of varied exercises offer the added plus of allowing for lots of practice.

The book is divided into three main parts: Part I deals exclusively with the present tense-including the conjugation of regular verbs, formation of questions, essential differences between ser and estar, use of the personal a, reflexive verbs, and the present progressive mood.Part II covers the other six tenses of the indicative mood: preterite, imperfect, future, conditional, present perfect, and past perfect.Part III presents the imperative and the subjunctive, aswell as the future perfect, conditional perfect, and the passive voice.

Two appendices complete the text-one lists verb conjugations, and the other highlights certain verbs and their corresponding prepositions. There are also two bilingual glossaries that define vocabulary introduced in the exercises.

As a companion to a basic text, as a review workbook, or as a reference source, Practice Makes Perfect: Spanish Verb Tenses is an indispensable tool for all those who want to practice and perfect their use of Spanish verbs.

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Spanish for Reading: A Self-Instructional Course Review

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(More customer reviews)Reading is not a bad way to learn a romance language like Spanish. You can start by reading this book. Then you can hammer down what you've learned and build your vocabulary by reading Spanish-language books. (Amazon has numerous dual-language Spanish/English books.) Then you can go to Mexico to get practice speaking and listening.
The authors give thoughtful advice about how to use this book. Included in that advice is the recomendation that you spend eighty to one-hundred twenty hours mastering its contents. This advice proved useful to me. I was growing frustrated at one point. Then I reviewed my log of hours spent learning, and I discovered I was going way too fast. So I slowed down, reviewed carefully, and then I proceeded at a more realistic pace.
One thing. On page 109 there are two columns labeled "Indirect object" and "Direct object". These labels are reversed. You'd be able to figure that out on your own, but now you don't have to. (You're welcome.)
As a companion to this text, I used "Practice Makes Perfect: Spanish Verb Tenses." Sometimes I needed a different perpective to understand a particular grammatical point. These two books articulate well. One gives you thoughtful, sophisticated readings and invites you to translate them into English; the other gives you English passages and invites you to translate them into Spanish. Practice makes Perfect goes into more detail on what it covers, but Spanish for Reading covers all the fundamental parts of speach, not just verbs (although of course verbs are eighty to eighty-five percent of learing Spanish).
For your eighty-to-one-hundred-twenty hours you get all the fundamental parts of speach for Spanish, plus about two thousand vocabulary words. The book contains numerous useful and interesting exercises. With the aid of a dictionary, you will be able to read right away after learning this book. When you have built up your vocabulary, you can throw away the dictionary.

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A unique approach to Spanish reading comprehension, Spanish for Reading can be used as a textbook supplement in classrooms or by anybody who is teaching himself Spanish. It begins by demonstrating similarities between words and parts of words in Spanish and English, and proceeds to offer practical instruction that will help readers broaden recognition of words and phrases. Each of the book's fifteen chapters concludes with a reading passage, the first of them quite easy to comprehend, and successive passages increasingly complex and sophisticated. Early passages are simple essays on Spain's and the Spanish-speaking world's language, geography, and culture. Later passages are excerpts from well-known works by world renowned Spanish writers, including Jorge Luis Borges, Pablo Neruda, and Gabriel Garcia-Marquez. Students who use this volume methodically will ultimately be reading and understanding these passages in their original, unedited Spanish, without need to seek outside help. Short of spending time in Spain or Latin America, here is as good an introduction to Spanish culture as a student will be able to find anywhere. Photos and line drawings.

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Spanish Verbs (Barron's Verbs) Review

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(More customer reviews)Please note that this is for the second edition of this book, copyright 2001. The previous edition says copyright 1990. I can't tell from the Amazon book page here if this is the first edition or second edition, but the cover design is slightly different from that displayed here from my copy, which I recently purchased, so I mention that just in case.
No matter what language you're learning (unless its Turkish, which has 100% regular verbs, or Japanese, which has only two), verbs are usually a major difficulty and stumbling block in learning a foreign language. This is the best compact verb book I've seen for Spanish. The pages VII to XL (7 to 40) in the introduction contain the best capsule grammar of verbs for Spanish I've seen, and is better than the ones I've seen in some of the bigger, beefier grammar books for quickly getting a good grasp of the basics as well as the more complex issues.
There are many features I like about this book, but one especially helpful thing the author does is to explain the formal grammatical names for the verb tenses, aspects, and moods and how they are formed in English, along with plenty of examples. For example, many of us have never thought of what the preterit or pluperfect is in English, but Kendris explains this along with many other useful things. Another nice feature is his discussion of how some verbs that express a mental state actually change meaning in the preterit. For example, the sentence, "Supe la verdad," means "I found out the truth." (Saber, which means to know, changes from "know" to "found" in the preterit). And the sentence "Pude hacerlo," means "I succeeded in doing it." (Poder, which means "to be able," means "succeeded" in the preterit).
Other features include extensive lists and coverage of irregular verbs, an index of 1000 verbs keyed to one of the models or patterns of the 300 main verbs in the text, an index of common irregular verbs identified by the infinitive, which allows you to look up which infinitive verb form it belongs to without knowing that initially, and an index of Spanish/English verbs. Each conjugation page contains at least a few examples at the bottom of the page of usages, such as in the Kendris's larger 501 Spanish Verbs book. Overall, an excellent little verb and grammar book for the student of Spanish, and considering the price is only 6 bucks and is over 300 pages long, a great value to boot.

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Approximately 300 most frequently used Spanish verbs are presented, one verb per page, arranged alphabetically, fully conjugated, and identified by the English infinitive form. Books in this series are smaller and shorter versions of Barron's 501 Verbs series. They make handy quick-reference sources for language students, teachers, and translators.

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Spanish Verbs For Dummies Review

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(More customer reviews)I particularly like this book because every excercise provides both the correct spanish answer and the english translation. Many books don't do that - and you are left to make assumptions as to the exact meaning of certain phrases or context.
The book is easy to work on, you can move quickly from lesson to lesson, and the tips are quite helpful. But above all, those translations are what sets this book apart from many others.

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A fun, comprehensive way to get up to speed on Spanish
With over 325 million speakers, Spanish is in a virtual dead heat with English as the second most popular spoken language. This easy-to-follow guide shows readers how to successfully conjugate verbs, providing easy, entertaining exercises and answer keys to reinforce different grammatical rules. More than just a dictionary-style list of verbs, Spanish Verbs For Dummies covers regular verbs in the present tense and six other simple tenses, interrogatives and imperatives, irregular verbs in all seven tenses, and Spanish verb nuances.
Mary Kraynak, MA (Indianapolis, IN), teaches Spanish to junior high and high school students and has served as a technical consultant to several Spanish learning guides.

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Spanish Stories / Cuentos Españoles (A Dual-Language Book) (English and Spanish Edition) Review

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(More customer reviews)This book includes several excellent stories by many of the finest Spanish authors starting from the 16th century to the 20th. I recommend it highly for the intermediate Spanish student.
When I started reading book I had to regularly refer to the english page for a translation. At the end of the book, I seldom need to check the translation.
I assume that the stories written in the 16th and 17th centuries were re-written to update them into current Spanish, as I would think the older Spanish would be much more difficult to understand. As a result, this made the stories easy to read at the same time I could appreciate the skill of the writers.

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Unique format offers 13 great stories in Spanish — from classics by Cervantes and Alarcon to contemporary works by Borges and Goytisolo. Complete faithful English translations on facing pages. Includes Spanish to English vocabulary, biographical-critical introductions, more.

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501 Spanish Verbs: with CD-ROM (Barron's 501 Spanish Verbs (W/CD)) Review

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(More customer reviews)Without a doubt, 501 Spanish Verbs is the most useful book available to a student of the Spanish language. It is not just for students, however. I have heard that even fluent professors have had to consult this book at one time or another because they were confused about how a word was conjugated. Verbs are the backbone of the Spanish language, and if you don't know how to conjugate them, people won't understand you. I take this book with me whenever I go on vacation to Spanish speaking countries, and it has proved infinitely useful during conversations where I didn't know how to say a verb. Spanish speakers are incredibly patient if you don't understand them and need to look something up, and this book is definitely the most helpful.
I should also add one thing: This book unfortunately does not distinguish between verbs commonly used in Spain, and other verbs used in Latin America that mean the same thing. An example is abrasar (to burn or light) and abrazar (to hug). I was telling a Colombian security guard that I was lighting fireworks, and he was confused. Turns out I was saying that I was hugging fireworks. Abrasar is only used in Spain. In Latin America the word for lighting or burning something is Encender. I hope this book helps you as much as it did for me.

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The World's Best Selling Verb Book-- and with good reason! Fluency in Spanish starts with knowledge of verbs--and Barron's 501 Spanish Verbs shows students and travelers exactly how to use the 501 most common and useful Spanish verbs in all 16 tenses and moods. Each verb is alphabetically listed in easy-to-follow chart form, one verb per page with its English translation. Important added features include-- Formation and usage of Spanish verb tenses and moods summarized as they relate to their English equivalents The 55 most essential Spanish verbs specially highlighted and supplemented with sample sentences and related words and expressions Progressive forms of Spanish verbs Formation of present and past participles Passive and active voice formations Principal parts of important Spanish verbs Sentences demonstrating Spanish verb usage in all tenses with English translations 26 sets of exercises in Spanish verb usage with answers explained Two-color type for ease of reference A-to-Z page edges marked in second color for quick reference to verbs Plus enlightening appendixes that cover-- Defective and impersonal verbs A guide to Spanish pronunciation Verbs used in weather expressions Verbs with prepositions An index of common irregular Spanish verb forms English-Spanish verb index List of more than 2,100 Spanish verbs! Every verb on the list is related to a model verb that's conjugated in the same way. Enclosed with each book is a brand-new CD-ROM filled with-- Sentence completion exercises Dialogue exercises Word Completion exercises Word Puzzles Matching Spanish and English phrases Unlike software enclosed with verb books from other publishers, Barron's CD-ROM concentrates exclusively on teaching verb usage that applies to reading, writing, and speaking in Spanish. The instructive and fun-to-do exercises and puzzles come with an audio option that demonstrates correct Spanish pronunciation. Barron's CD-ROM is also more adaptable than the others because you can download it on any PC or Mac. 501 Spanish Verbs plus CD-ROM--a great language learning program! It's an invaluable classroom supplement for students and teachers, a self-teaching guide for international travelers, and a handy reference volume for translators. Students quickly discover that learning Spanish becomes easier with this book/CD-ROM combination because it teaches verbs and verb usage systematically. In addition to the 501 verb tables, the authors have provided a wealth of additional features that will help students develop a truly comprehensive command of Spanish for speaking, reading, writing, and listening comprehension. There's a reason other publishers imitate 501 Spanish Verbs. After almost 50 years on the market, Barron's verb books are still the best! Choose the original!

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Spanish for Dummies Review

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(More customer reviews)I like this book. A lot. It's one of my favorites for learning and reviewing bite sized pieces of Spanish.
I agree with the reviewer who said that it should not be used alone. Actually, what I am finding after trying to learn Spanish for business for about a year, is that there is NO single resource that can be used alone.
I travel a lot on business to various Spanish speaking countries and this is the book that I take along most often. It deserves a place in your Spanish-learning library.
My experience has been that to learn Spanish on your own, you need books, tapes, dictionaries, videos, Spanish TV, newspapers, PLUS you have to practice, practice, practice with native speakers. Every type of resource you can think of. If you want to learn quickly, move to a Spanish speaking country for a year and devote the year to learning Spanish. Otherwise, it will require persistence and patience.

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Spanish For Dummies is the fun and easy way to learn Spanish quickly and painlessly! Written by the experts at the renowned Berlitz school, this hands-on resource shows you the ins and outs of the Spanish language and culture, acting as both a guidebook and a reference. Soon you will have all the tools you need to:
Master the nuts and bolts of grammar
Greet others and introduce yourself
Get to know people with small talk
Order in restaurants
Shop anywhere
Go out on the town
Enjoy yourself with local recreation
Have a conversation on the phone
Work in an office and around the house
Ask for directions
Check in and out of a hotel
Use transportation
Call for help in an emergency

This guide features ways to start speaking Spanish quickly, as well as common expressions, important holidays, and phrases that'll make you sound fluent. Complete with an audio CD that allows you to hear actual Spanish conversations by native Spanish speakers, Spanish for Dummies is the ultimate guide for speaking Spanish quick and easy!
Note: CD-ROM/DVD and other supplementary materials are not included as part of eBook file.

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Madrigal's Magic Key to Spanish: A Creative and Proven Approach Review

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(More customer reviews)I got decent grades in college Spanish; two "A-‘s" and a "B+." However, when I needed to actually speak Spanish, I was lost. I couldn't say much except "Mas cervezas, por favor (More beer, please)!"
"Madrial's Magic Key", along with the expensive (but quite worth it) Pimsleur tapes, have corrected the "mis-education" I was subjected to. The drills Ms. Madrigal presents are easy to remember and fun to do, not like those tedious translations and verb conjugations that college texts are so fond of. In two months, studying this book in my spare time, I retained more Spanish than I did in an entire academic year. And, for the first time, I can actually say that I understand Spanish.
I would supplement this book with a comprehensive book on Spanish grammar (I have the Barron's, but I suppose any would work) and a dictionary. I would definitely recommend "Breaking Out of Beginner's Spanish" by Joseph Keenan for an in depth take on colloquial Spanish as well. Further, if you have the money, buy the "Pimsleur Comprehensive" series as well. Get vol.'s 1-3, even though they are pricey. If you are an audio/tactile learner like me, I guarantee that you will retain more Spanish idioms using the Pimsleur method than any other.

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Anyone can read, write, and speak Spanish in only a few short weeks with this unique and proven method, which completely eliminates rote memorization and boring drills.

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6,000+ Essential Spanish Words with CD-ROM (Essential Vocabulary) Review

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(More customer reviews)This book is fantastic. It is organized in a way that you can quickly review a page or little section each day to really learn your vocabulary quickly and easily. I leave this book on my nightstand, and every night before I turn off the light, I go through a page, memorizing the whichever words are new to me (or not as familiar as they should be).
Also, this book comes with a CD that has flashcard software on it. For the low price of this book, the flashcard software alone is worth the price. You can ADD words to the computerized flashcards -- heck, you can even use the flashcards for subjects other than Spanish!
This book and its CD are worth their weight in gold.

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First Spanish Reader: A Beginner's Dual-Language Book (Beginners' Guides) (English and Spanish Edition) Review

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(More customer reviews)First Spanish Reader: A Beginner's Dual Language Book, is an excellent beginner book for the Spanish neophyte or for the individual with some background in Spanish that needs a little refreshing. It contains 41 short stories/proverbs in somewhat graded difficulty of well-known Spanish writers past and present. Spanish verbal forms, that bugaboo for most students of Spanish, are arranged so that the first 15 selections are in the present-indicative, after which imperfect-indicative and preterite are introduced, followed by future and conditional verbs towards the end. No subjunctive verb forms are found in this small volume. Idiomatic Spanish is introduced as well, using common idioms understood in all parts of Spanish-speaking world.
The choice of selections reflects the Spanish culture well and is excellent, often highly amusing, and arranged so that short and long selections are interspersed.
In the rear of the book, oral and written exercises regarding each selection are especially helpful if this book is to be used in the pedagogical setting. Additionally, a thorough vocabulary, referenced for the selections presented, rounds out this book.
Editor Angel Flores has done a remarkable job with this book. I would highly recommend it for the beginning Spanish student or those who wish to brush up on their prior Spanish.

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Perfect for beginning students of Spanish, this affordable anthology is filled with 41 delightful stories and proverbs based on works of Don Juan Manuel, Luis Taboada, Ricardo Palma, and other noted writers. Complete and faithful English translations are featured on the facing pages of the Spanish text. Exercises are also included.

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