Buscalo! (Look It Up!) : A Quick Reference Guide to Spanish Grammar and Usage

Rating:
Summary: An interesting resource
Review: I found this guide to be invaluable as a professor to give me ideas on how to teach challenging topics from different angles. I can give no advice on whether this book would be of any use to a student.

Rating:
Summary: Un buen libro, ¡la verdad!
Review: Last year I attended a language school in Mexico for six months. And this book, which I had stumbled onto in a Texas bookstore and brought with me, was a life-saver, better than anything the school provided. It's an excellent reference in an easy-to-use alphabetical format. It is cross-referenced in español and inglés (that's English to you, gringo!). It gives tips on precision, pronunciation and sentence structure. If you are confused, this stupendous little softback will steer you in the right direction. If you have but a single book to back up your class struggles with español, this is it, mis amigos. Trust me on this. If you find yourself scratching your head in befuddlement, simply look at the appropriate alphabetical entry. And before you know it, you will look like Antonio Banderas or Catherine Zeta-Jones. Remember that Zorro movie? Good-looking couple. Maybe your sword play will sharpen, too. I hope so, for your sake.

Excellent book for us estudiantes de español! Puede darnos mucha ayuda.

Now, take a nanosecond and give me a positive vote, please. I've tried to help you out. ¡Gracias! Good karma on you.

Rating:
Summary: A very handy quick reference- covers most grammar concepts
Review: This a handy quick reference Spanish grammar book alphabetically arranged that tackles queries that don't require much explanation. This book cannot be used to learn Spanish however, I would say it serves as a reference for advanced students and teachers. It does not cover all grammar topics and definitely not any complex structures but can definitely act as a handy resource if you are looking to clarify a doubt or if you are in the middle of writing a composition or an essay in Spanish thus not having to consult a text book and search through several chapters and grammar points to hopefully address the one or few queries that you have. As an educator of the Spanish language, I did find it handy because whenever I had a query that can be researched in Búscalo I was able to find what I was looking for within seconds. Some examples of the grammar concepts that the book covers are: verb conjugations, moods- indicative, imperative, subjunctive and their usage, prepositions- por, para, a, de , en etc. , the usage of "hay", "hubo", numbers, pronouns of all kinds (subject, prepositional, reflexive), verbs-reflexive vs. non-reflexive, the usage of "gustar" and like verbs, nouns, adjectives and adverbs. The purpose of the book is to clarify key grammar concepts and the most problematic ones without going into depth on the subject matter. If you are an advanced student, be it high-school or university level, a native speaker or an educator of Spanish, "Búscalo" will prove beneficial to you for quick, hands on clarifications. This is a reliable and worthy reference material for those who want to maintain grammatically correct usage when speaking or writing in the Spanish language.