Spanish for Reading: A Self-Instructional Course

I love this book for many reasons. It is well thought out and the stories carefully chosen for both pedagogical and cultural purposes. It makes learning fun and includes enough repetition that you assimilate a lot of vocabulary almost effortlessly. The same can be said for learning grammar and good sentence construction. I am one of those people who have a lot of difficulty learning a language and find an audio approach tedious. This book gave me the conceptual framework and confidence to pursue more traditional methods of learning a language. While this book won't build much conversational skill, it will certainly support and reinforce such methods. For those who have only pursued conversational Spanish, it will serve as a fun way to review and to enjoy what you have learned when there is no one to talk to in Spanish. This book is entirely appropriate for beginners and advanced beginners. It is progressive and the pace was just right for me. I wasn't frustrated at all going through the progression and it was just challenging enough to stay interesting without being overwhelming.

I can only echo what the other reviewers have said. This book takes the reader step by step to proficiency in reading Spanish. The exercises are thoughtfully planned, and you feel like an experienced teacher is guiding you through the process. This is an excellent tutorial on learning to read Spanish. It's a great value for the price. Highly recommended.

In addition to previous reviews. Very well thought-out course. Inventive cognitive tasks. Awakens Spanish intuition (and in this aspect is similar to children's way of learning a language). Concise, down-to-earth, no-nonsense coursebook for independent study. In addition to this book you still need a dictionary, a grammar reference and maybe a conversational course/practice. But it's a must-have for anyone who needs to jump-start their perception of Spanish sentence structures! Reading passages progress from geographical/cultural notes (with maps) to excerpts from Spanish literature. Grammar topics do not correspond to what's found in regular grammar courses and this sets you thinking. The book takes a "cognates" approach which presents you words similar to their English equivalents first. Looking at words you can recognise you may guess the meaning of the rest in a given sentence. Illustrations are mostly random images of the Spanish world, however their cultural span may entice you to look up certain landmarks or places. Absolutely recommended to absolute beginners!

This book will have you reading complex paragraphs in 15 minutes. If you need to learn Spanish to read, it is all you need to start with; if you need to learn Spanish to write or speak, it is still the best way to start. Uses programmed learning: incremental increases, instant feedback, and very logical approach. No drills, no looking up vocabulary, nothing but reading, at an interesting, intelligent level. Immediately builds confidence. Buy this book now if you're trying to learn Spanish!

This is a beautifully structured book for teaching yourself to read Spanish (not to write or speak it). I'd taken some Spanish in high school and a semester in college--fifteen years ago--and I needed to prepare for a language exam required by my doctoral program. A friend lent me his collection of books, CDs, and flash cards for learning Spanish but said that this book was the main thing I needed. It's all I really used (plus I did a few practice translations from books in my field), and I passed my exam. Now I've borrowed a copy of "French for Reading," also co-authored by Karl Sandberg, to prepare for my French exam.