Spanish for Reading: A Self-Instructional Course

Rating:
Summary: Pass your grad school language exam
Review: A beautifully structured book for teaching yourself to read Spanish (not to write or speak it). I'd taken some Spanish in high school and a semester in college--fifteen years ago--and I needed to prepare for a language exam required by my doctoral program. A friend lent me his collection of books, CDs, and flash cards for learning Spanish but said that this book was the main thing I needed. It's all I really used (plus I did a few practice translations from books in my field), and I passed my exam. Now I've borrowed a copy of "French for Reading," also co-authored by Karl Sandberg, to prepare for my French exam.

Rating:
Summary: Pass your grad school language exam
Review: A beautifully structured book for teaching yourself to read Spanish (not to write or speak it). I'd taken some Spanish in high school and a semester in college--fifteen years ago--and I needed to prepare for a language exam required by my doctoral program. A friend lent me his collection of books, CDs, and flash cards for learning Spanish but said that this book was the main thing I needed. It's all I really used (plus I did a few practice translations from books in my field), and I passed my exam. Now I've borrowed a copy of "French for Reading," also co-authored by Karl Sandberg, to prepare for my French exam.

Rating:
Summary: A good way to start learning Spanish
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: A good way to start learning Spanish
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Best, Very Best, Absolute Best Way to Learn Spanish
Review: This book will have you reading complex paragraphs in 15 minutes. If you need to learn Spanish to read, it is all you need to start with; if you need to learn Spanish to write or speak, it is still the best way to start. Uses programmed learning: incremental increases, instant feedback, and very logical approach. No drills, no looking up vocabulary, nothing but reading, at an interesting, intelligent level. Immediately builds confidence. Buy this book now if you're trying to learn Spanish!