Books I Like for Studying Spanish
Posted by TC
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: The best way to learn a language is to speak it. Find someone to practice with. There’s no substitute for practice.
And if you aren’t speaking it, listen to it. Listen to music. Listen to podcasts. Listen to university lectures in ITunes University, a free part of the ITunes store. (Change your language to Spanish.)
But if you want fluency, you have to hit the books too. Don’t stress yourself out. Just do a page or two a day. Studying in frequent but short periods of time is better than hours of cramming once a week. As both a teacher and student, I fully agree with the Law of Diminishing Returns.
Choose books with simple, clear text – not a lot of photos and distractions. The books I have for my university English classes where I work here in Mexico are full of confusing, unnecessary and downright cheesy stuff, as if to distract the students so they don’t realize they are studying, but having fun instead. Ridiculous.
(I have a theory about ESL books – that every one includes Nelson Mandela, J.K. Rowling or the Japanese hot dog-eating lady.)
It’s absolutely necessary that the answers to the exercises are in the back of the book. Again, the books I have to teach English with don’t do that. It must be part of the contract between the publishing companies and the universities.
If you are a total beginner, get a book that teaches what you need most: common questions and answers.
Communicating in Spanish is a good guide to get you started speaking Spanish. It has the basic questions and answers and lists of important vocabulary. It won’t confuse you with explanations of complicated Spanish grammar.
(Click the pictures of the books below to see them on Amazon.)
One of the hardest things about Spanish – a big difference from English – are verb conjugations. Verbs change for every person (I, you, she, we, etc.) and every tense (past, present, etc. – including several that don’t exist in English, like imperfect, pluperfect, and the frustrating subjunctive tenses). You’ve got your work cut out for you.
Madrigal’s Magic Key to Spanish is the best book I’ve seen that introduces these grammar necessities:
- ¡Click the book!
Because of this abundance of verb conjugations in Spanish, you have to do a lot of exercises. I’ve worked my way through Spanish Verb Tenses twice now.
(Tip: don’t write in your books. Write in a notebook or on scrap paper instead. Then you can do the exercises again or sell the book.)
This series, Practice Makes Perfect, has a lot of good workbooks. I’ve used this one too:
Right now I’m on Advanced Spanish Grammar. This book covers a lot of ground – vocabulary, verb conjugations, cultural notes and regional differences in Spanish. Plus it’s all in Spanish – instructions too, which is useful:
And finally, I bought Contemporary Latin American Literature on my last trip to the states and have cracked it a few times. It is an overview of important writers with their poems, short stories, and novel excerpts.
Please leave suggestions for studying Spanish the comments. Thanks for reading!
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