Graded Spanish Reader: Primera Etapa, Alternate

Rating:
Summary: Awesome Spanish Book!
Review: I used this book in my third year spanish class last year. It has excellent short stories along with various vocabulary excersises. At the beginning of each lesson, there are definitons of unfamiliar words which help out enormously. If you want to take your spanish knowledge to a higher level, buy this awesome book!

Rating:
Summary: this book=hell on earth
Review: This book was the worst possible book I could have chosen for my students in my Spanish 2H class. Not only was it boring and long but not very helpful at all. Yes, this book does have vocab words in the beginning that are "supposed" to help you along in the story but they give you 15 vocab words and 15 paged long stories. It doesn't help whatsoever. The footnotes are somewhat useful but there are only 1 or two footnotes for a page whereas my students had 10 questions about each page. The dictionary at the end was helpful however it did not contain many words that you needed. The stories were long, boring and confusing for my kids and they explained grammar AFTER the story which was no help at all if you've read the story and dont get it at all. They also explain and say everything in Spanish which I found to be too deep for them and there were too many essay questions for them to write. Spanish is supposed to encourage you to excel and comprehend it not disgust you so much you get headaches from it! Some of the excersises were repetitive and weren't helpful at all. I soent most of the class time explaining to students about the story. Word of advice: Save yourself the time and energy and your students the 40 bucks and not get this horrendous book. And as they say in Spanish: No me gusta el libro porque es muy stupido.