 "Practice Makes Perfect Spanish Verb tenses" | 2009-10-25 |
| - Reviewed By User: A3OUWQTQ47SEMK |
| In the short time that I have used the book, it has proven to be one of the better foreign language books that I have ever used. The exercises are very helpful and having the answers are a plus, so one does not get led astray. |
| |
 "Excellent refresher" | 2009-09-05 |
| - Reviewed By User: AGEZE4Y5LXIO5 |
| This is an excellent refresher for people who have the Spanish basics and want to review. Very well organized and fun to work with. I use it almost every day and am reawakening many memories from Spanish classes of yore. |
| |
 "A Valuable Resource -- Except for One Thing" | 2009-08-11 |
| - Reviewed By User: A31ETP79BGZ3AX |
As a professor of Spanish with nearly 30 years of experience teaching, writing and using Spanish, and as a professional translator, there are certain things I look for when I select a textbook or recommend workbooks. One of those is how verbs are formatted, that is, how they are visually presented to learners. The other thing I have examined over the years is how authors present the subjunctive conceptually and how they organize their treatment of it.
I do recommend this book for most of its content and the practice it offers. However, it fails both of the criteria above. First of all, she claims that the use of the subjunctive can be reduced to "seven subheadings" and immediately makes an oft repeated statement that misleads students: that "at the root of every subjunctive sentence, there is always some aspect that is not known or not controllable." First of all, the statement is imprecise: "sentences" per se are not "subjunctive" -- they contain a clause in which the subjunctive is used and which are introduced by an explicit or implicit main clause in which the indicative is used (except when the imperfect or pluperfect subjunctives are used in hypothetical statements). Furthermore, by saying that the subjunctive involves something not known or uncontrollable, students will be led to use the subjunctive whenever they themselves are uncertain.
Instead, students should be aware that the use of the subjunctive or indicative depends not on what is known or unknown, but on very specific, mechanical-structural rules and that there are four types of subordinate clauses, each of which has its particular rules for deciding whether to use the subjunctive or the indicative. These four clause types are: subordinated noun clauses, subordinated adjective clauses, after certain adverbial expressions and hypothetical (or contrafactual) statements. Each clause type has rules specific to that clause type for using (or not using) the subjunctive.
Once the problem of the subjunctive is laid out in that framework and the problems posed by sequence of tense are addressed -- to show which tense of the subjunctive mood must be used, things can begin to fall into place. Unfortunately, her presentation and explanations have made the problem of the subjunctive intractable and unpredictable for students.
So, I recommend you end the confusion and buy Practice Makes Perfect: The Spanish Subjunctive Up Close (Practice Makes Perfect Series). |
| |
| "Spanish Verb Tenses Practice makes Perfect" | 2009-06-23 |
| - Reviewed By User: A36GXNIJ58XEN4 |
| This is my second book by Dorothy Richmond. She covers the material clearly and gives practice both for the new material and in contrast with other material. You learn other vocabulary as well as you go along. I have been speaking Spanish for over 20 years at work, but I was self taught for the most part and so I have holes in my knowledge. I have learned much to fill said holes from this workbook and from Spanish Pronouns and Prepositions, which I originally purchased. |
| |
| "Great practice exercises" | 2009-06-14 |
| - Reviewed By User: A1XYG23AA7SQU8 |
This book supplements the "Speak in a Week" set that I got nicely. "Speak in a Week" gets you speaking quickly, helps you learn structure and gives you an audio track to help with proper pronunciation, but it's a little weak on grammar.
This book really fills in the gaps. Each section introduces a grammar concept, explains it clearly & then gives you several practice exercises to try it out. The answers for each exercise are in the back of the book, as well as a limited Spanish-English dictionary. The only downside to this book is that I haven't seen much to help you learn to pronounce the language correctly. |
| |
| "One of the best Spanish verb books!" | 2009-05-19 |
| - Reviewed By User: A3KFXZVEWIY0U2 |
It's crazy that you can buy this book for only $12. It's full of useful information that will help you understand how to use verbs in different tenses... the explanations are clear and there are examples after them and plenty of useful exercises (mostly translating sentences and paragraphs but there are a few true and false) . Going through the book thoroughly once, I've improved my Spanish and I'm now a lot more confident with using verbs. There are a couple things that would have been good to include...
One thing is, like another person said, mixing things that you have gone over earlier in the book with newer info for exercises. It would help a lot. Going over irregular verbs even more would help as well. Still, the book is great, lots of info, lots of exercises, I've been studying Spanish for a while and I don't see any noticeable typos..there's a little dictionary part at the back, Spanish-English and English-Spanish. The book is well organized and in my opinion, it's worth even 5 times the price. |
| |
International Available
