Complete Idiot's Guide to Learning Spanish on Your Own

Although there were some errors in the book, I still found that it was a pretty good resource to learn Spanish. I had originally used this book a few years ago with Barrons FSI Spanish and found that this book greatly enhanced my learning with the Barrons FSI Spanish. In fact, I recently recommended this book to a friend that's learning Spanish and I still continue use the book as a resource. I found that the most helpful parts of the book were the "10 Minutes Al Dia" tips and the "Memory Master" sections. The book also has ample written exercises and tests to help reinforce everything that you learn. Besides the occasional errors that the book contains, my only complaint is that the author made many useless attempts to explain the pronunciation of the Spanish vocabulary words. Not only was this unnecessary since all Spanish words are pronounced the way they are written unlike in English. It was unhelpful because in order teach correct pronunciation of a foreign language you need audio and not just text. Complaints aside, this is still a very good resource to learn Spanish.

I bought this book and within a couple of months was speaking (and pronouncing) Spanish well enough to at least communicate at a basic level on a recent trip to Venezuela.It teaches grammar in a "pace yourself" manner, and effectively teaches proper pronunciation too (which is often difficult without an accompanying audio tape).I've purchased several different foreign language learning tools, and this on was by far the most easily understood and the best value for my money.

The Complete Idiot's Guide... Is an excellent book that graphically and linguistically is very easy to learn from. It covers all areas of the Spanish language thoroughly in a simple, yet explanatory way on spots where a few people are prone to miss things. There's extra tidbits and facts noting exceptions of certain rules when trying to form sentences in Spanish that many books will fail to tell you. It's designed to walk begginers all the way to intermediate, and can very well guide intermediates fully into the advanced stages. All topics of sentence formation are covered and those technical english terms like "superlative sentences" or "past present progressive" that you'll adventually have to understand trying to learn the Spanish rules of sentence formation are always explained fully. There's no need of having a grammarbook beside you. And best of all, it stays away from technical jargon as much as possible and constantly gives scenarios of how what you're learning in Spanish now, will come into practical application when actually in a Spanish Speaking country. All while without straying from the information on the subject it's trying to give. An excellent book! A walk-through, tuturial, and personal guide to the full structure of the Spanish langauge.