SPANISH FOR BEGINNER (Everyday Handbooks)

Rating:
Summary: Takes you far quickly
Review: Duff's "Spanish for Beginners" is concise, comprehensive, and especially suitable for self-study. It starts from the very beginning, requiring no prior exposure to Spanish, but by the end one's knowledge reaches significantly past the beginner's level; the goal seems to be dealing with unabridged Spanish by the time one has gone through it.

To allow such rapid language acquisition, the approach taken differs from many other textsbooks. There are no drill exercises; instead, the student is asked to be proactive while learning the language. The grammar is eventually taken to a fairly advanced point; the explanations are not exhaustive, however, and for the most part come in digestible chunks. Once the foundations are laid in the initial chapters, reading unmodified excerpts from original literature supplied with interlinear translations is used as the key teaching tool; the selections are not very long, are quite pleasant and include both Spanish and Latin American authors. Finally, a targeted situational vocabulary (airport, hotel, bathroom, restaurant, etc.) with sufficient examples of use is introduced in each section, nicely balancing the more literary flavor of the reading selections.

I found that by supplementing Duff with little more than a set of inexpensive tapes with dialogues, a simplified first reader, and a good dictionary, I was able to understand unabridged Spanish in both written and oral forms much sooner than I had expected. During a subsequent trip to Spain, I found that I could speak the language too.

This book was first published in 1958, so some (minor) aspects of grammar, orthography, and usage may have evolved since then, but I found them to be inconsequential to the learning process. The book performs an incredible feat of teaching Spanish from scratch to a rather advanced level in only some 330 rather modestly-sized pages, and its approach has worked very well for me. I recommend it highly.

NOTE: The book does not come with tapes, but I accompanied Duff with the inexpensive collection of graded dialogues provided on two 90-minute cassettes in "Spanish on the Go" from Barron's, and I found them to be very helpful and sufficient to break "the sound barrier". (Beware of the Castilian Spanish, rather than Latin American, accent on those tapes, at least in the first edition I have; this may or may not be what you want.) Any simple introductory course on cassettes would also do, and may be preferable for many learners as a starting point; Duff can then be used, in parallel or subsequently, to teach onself the rest of the language, since it covers far more advanced material than most audio-based courses.

Rating:
Summary: Best approach I've found for learning Spanish
Review: I have tried and failed with other approaches to learning Spanish. This book seems much better. It emphasizes an understanding of the language over mere memorization of phrases. I have purchased Duff's French and Italian for Beginners, too. I hope they work as well as the Spanish one.

Rating:
Summary: no-nonsense; pretty good
Review: More like 3 1/2 stars. I had no Spanish background and got this book hoping to learn a little bit before heading for Latin America. The method and organization are quite good. You start reading passages in Spanish early on, including real literature instead of ad-hoc stuff. Grammar and conversation are efficiently presented. It demands a certain self-motivation, it's not one of those passive, stupid language books with big pictures and questions where you just fill in blanks. On the whole, it compares favorably with the Teach Yourself Spanish book by Kattan-Ibarra, which I also tried and I found to be quite good (maybe better).

The one big problem with Duff's book is that there's no cassette with it--only the wise but useless suggestion that the reader seek out a native speaker. Also, the book is dated. It's from the early 60s, and doesn't seem to have been edited much since. The conversational stuff, while effective, at times doesn't sound too natural. Still, it's a pretty rigorous, intensive book, especially for getting a quick handle on reading Spanish, and better than a lot of the junk out there which I've also sifted through.