Practical Spanish Grammar: A Self-Teaching Guide (Wiley Self-Teaching Guides)

Watch Video Here: http://www.amazon.com/review/RRYORJURPZPII Watch my video review and find out the pluses and minuses of ordering Practical Spanish Grammar. And also watch this video review to find out exactly what you must do in order to buy this book here at Amazon and also get lots of BONUS video lessons from your's truly, Jazmin, where I teach useful Spanish words and phrases.

I am truly enjoying the exercises in the book. I have seen some typos and there are times a question (rarely) doesn't reflect someting already covered; however, these are minimal. I feel the notes are helpful in rounding out the lessons and giving some flavor to lanuage study. I have yet to start the advance Spanish grammar, but I own it and am looking forward to continuing my studies.

The title is a little misleading, as this is not just a grammar reference, but a near-comprehensive course for learning elementary Spanish. It consists of dialogues with vocabulary lists followed by exercises that teach you the grammar rules and help you remember the vocab. The only thing that's missing is audio recordings of the dialogues. I haven't worked my way all the way through it yet, but so far it's been pretty useful.

I have dozens of Spanish books for self-learners and the Practical Spanish Grammar and Advanced Spanish grammar are clearly the best. Each chapter begins with a comprehensive, relevant (to that chapter) list of vocabulary words. The vocabulary list is annotated with footnotes to differetiate how the meanings of some words may vary from Latin America to Spain, etc. Following the vocabulary are grammar rules. After that are self-correcting exercises using the vocabulary and grammar the student has just studied. The book is organized for the student to learn as efficiently as possible.

The problem with any "book" of language learning is that it over looks a very import distinction between language acquisition and language learning. There is a difference and it is not too difficult concept.

Language acquisition is what your child is doing from the age 0-7 years of age long before learning his native tongue. The spoken fluency a child acquires before going off to his first day of formal school is what you as an adult need to be doing long before beginning any sort of formal language "learning" is attempted such as what is in these books.

If you do not engage in language acquisition before engaging in language learning then all you will become is an "exegete" of the language. You will be able to read written text but not be able to speak the language because you never "acquired" the language!

Language acquisition is accomplished in the identical way you learned your native language. True immersion will be the hearing first of hundreds of thousands of repetitions of the target language before any production.