Better Than Barron's | Practice Makes Perfect: Complete Spanish Grammar

Practice Makes Perfect | Practice Makes Perfect: Complete Spanish Grammar | Gilda Nissenberg

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	• Practice Makes Perfect: Complete Spanish Grammar Gilda Nissenberg McGraw-Hill, 2004 - 356 pages average customer review:based on 24 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Practice makes perfect.

This is a great book for all levels. For beginners it is well written and has lots of excersises. For advanced students you can check all answers in the back making this a great self help book. The lessons are well set out and easy to understand.

Better Than Barron's

Whether you've already used up the previous two Spanish guides in the Practice Makes Perfect Series (Spanish Verb Tenses, and Spanish Pronouns and Pronouns), or this is your introduction, this workbook is as good as it gets for the intermediate to advanced student of Spanish who wants to keep learning beyond the classroom. Complete Spanish Grammar has it all--friendly, down-to-earth language, exercises that could have been taken right out of Hispanic shops and streets and living rooms, and explanations of grammar components that actually make sense.
I don't know how many times I've heard the exact phrases I just saw in the workbook while walking down the streets of Mexican towns. And since it's soft-cover, it's easy to take with you and work with while traveling. Hey, at $10.95, you can even afford to buy and extra one to keep in the car.

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Practice Makes Perfect

All the books in this series are wonderful, especially if you're using them to supplement a course text. I would recommend buying all three, so when using this one and there is a particular grammar element which is tricky you can refer to either the 'verb' or 'pronouns and prepositions' books to examine the point more.

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Excellent review for someone with previous knowledge

Fantastic series!

What kind of learner am I?
I teach in a university-based adult education program, where many of my students are native Spanish speakers. My high school and college Spanish classes were a distant memory, but when I chose this book and its companions (pronouns and verbs), I DID remember enough to communicate at a basic level. I've found this series excellent for improving my Spanish enough for my students to comment enthusiastically after a relatively short time. I have no instructor, but I learn well from books, and I already knew how to pronounce Spanish words. For someone else in my position, I can't recommend this series highly enough--it's the best I found after extensive searching, library loans, etc.

Getting the most from this product:
I also recommend getting all three books (complete grammar, pronouns, and verbs) as I did. I've found that it's been helpful to work through a few sections in one book, switch to one of the others, and move ahead in similar jags through all three at once. I can tell when to switch by when I start to feel like I'm getting in over my head--I think it would be difficult to learn alone using just one of these.

Another tip: This series is pure grammar, but there's plenty of culture and literature available free online. I've supplemented the books by reading Spanish-language newspapers online (my favorite seems to be the BBC/Latin America), pasting the text into www.freetranslation.com to check my reading as needed. Often, I've translated these in their entirety for practice (the free translation's enough to understand, but not a particularly good translation). I also found a Spanish-speaking penpal by visiting Spanish chatrooms, and write back and forth frequently as a way to practice my written Spanish. These activities have provided the learning richness that simple grammar texts aren't intended to offer.

Who shouldn't use this?
However, if (for example) you know no (or almost no) Spanish now or remember very little vocabulary, this would be a poor choice. It definitely assumes some level of familiarity with the language.

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Good work book.

I bought this work book three years after my last Spanish course because I was going to retake Spanish and wanted to refresh my memory. Practice is definitely the best way to learn and remember a language, and this work book was sufficient and helpful. I actually enjoyed the exercises, although some are ovelry simplified. I'm not sure how good this book would be for someone without previous courses in Spanish, but it worked well for me. The explanatory sections are short and clear, and are followed by exercises pertaining to the lessons. The book builds upon previous chapters. I also tried the Barron's Spanish series, which are much thicker and somewhat clumsy. I liked both the "Practice Makes Perfect" and "Barron's" series, but I think that the former is more comprehensive and probably best for someone who is reviewing Spanish.

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reviews: 1, 2, 3, page 4, 5

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