Practice Makes Perfect: Spanish Verb Tenses by Dorothy Richmond
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Book Reviews of Practice Makes Perfect: Spanish Verb Tenses
Book Review: Learning Spanish basics
Summary: 5 Stars
I began learning Spanish 16 months ago on a very informal basis, largely due to my changing work environment. I have purchased some instrtuctional CD's and Spanish for Dummies and Spanish Verbs for Dummies. The 'dummies' series does offer information about culture and provides an excellent phonetic reference for correct pronunciation of words. Both were interesting and pragmatic.
This book, [Spanish Verb Tenses] was recommended by Amazon. I read the reviews and found the price to be reasonable enough to try the book. I have found the book to be very user friendly. The concepts and gramatical basics are covered, but the exercises are enjoyable. I have since purchased Ms. Richmond's other two books: one for vocabulary and the other for pronouns. Each have delivered the exceptional discussion of language. They highlight both the similarities between english and spanish as well as the decisive differences. I feel that these books will provide me with skills to be more confident to speak spanish to native speakers in a gramatically correct manner. Thank you--
Book Review: Great for "old school" visual learners
Summary: 5 Stars
I studied spanish waaaay back in middle & high school but have forgotten practically everything except the basics, i.e. present tense conjugation of a few regular -ar, -er, -ir verbs. These days, so many people approach me speaking Spanish, it's a shame not to be able to reply. This book is a great resource for me. I attend a Spanish conversation club but I have a "terrible" ear. I'm a visual learner - I need to see the word & write it so it "sticks". This workbook provides plenty of simple written exercises. Plus the explanations are clear & straightforward (why aren't school textbooks written this way?). If you are an auditory learner, this workbook might not be enough for you - try something like the more-affordable-than-RosettaStone Berlitz Spanish Premier (Win/Mac) w. interactive video & audio. But if you are 1) an avid notetaker, 2) absorb new information best when it is written & 3) like the structure of a book you can work your way through, I HIGHLY recommend this for you.Book Review: One of the best Spanish verb books!
Summary: 5 Stars
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.
Book Review: Well worth the Money!
Summary: 5 Stars
The world needs more language materials like this one; cheap books that tackle an important and difficult area of the target language, without a lot of confusing and superfluous material.As anyone who has tried to learn a Romance language knows, the hardest part of learning Spanish, French, Italian, etc, is mastering the myriad of verb tenses. Once you have your verb tenses down pat, the rest is relatively easy. This book does a good job of covering those verb tenses. Admirably, it doesn't bog you down by giving you hundreds of words that you'll probably never use, but limits the amount a vocabulary it throws at you, instead consentrating on working the more important verbs, and working them thoroughly.
As they say, practice makes perfect, and you can never have too much practice when it comes to verbs.
I highly recommend this book along with it's companion piece, which works with prepositions and pronouns (the other areas of the language that are apt to give the learner some difficulty).
Book Review: This book is so great!
Summary: 5 Stars
This book and the other Practice-Makes-Perfect workbook by Dorothy Richmond ("Spanish Pronouns and Prepositions") are the best Spanish books I've ever used. I just got back from 2 years in the Peace Corps in Honduras and I studied these books every day. They REALLY helped me learn more Spanish! In addition to the concise, easy-to-understand instruction sections, there's tons of exercises to do (with the correct answers in the back of the book) and as I did the exercises, I picked up all kinds of things that I'd been wondering how to say. I also liked the verb workbook a lot because it went way beyond the present tense, all the way to the subjunctive uses of "haber" and other more advanced things I really wanted to know. (This book is especially great if you already know some Spanish because you need some vocabulary to do the exercises, unless you don't mind looking up lots of words in the dictionary.) I highly recommend this book!