Practice Makes Perfect: Complete Spanish Grammar

This book deserves a 5-star rating because it is very comprehensive and it is very cheap. I love the exercieses because not only can you practice the grammar but also learn more new vocabularies.

However, this book is NOT for beginners. The author states in the preface that this book is for advanced beginners or above. You should have at least very basic knowledge of the lauguage. I started learning Spanish by listening to the Michel Thomas CD's (the complete 8-CD set). I really learned a lot, but the Michel Thomas course does not cover every thing. If you really want to be fluent or to be able to read Spanish, you should study more on your own. This book is a great follow-up.

My copy of this book does not miss anything. Don't listen to the other reviewer.

This book is amazing. It really does contain ALL aspects of spanish grammar. There are clear grammar explanations, plenty of practice excercises and good vocabulary/idiom lists. Seriously, buy this book.
BTW: don't listen to the above reviewer. My copy is not missing a single page.

My husband who is a Spanish professor picked this book out for me when I first started learning Spanish. In the very beginning, it was too difficult. But, after a few weeks into my Spanish class it became manageable.

It was an excellent supplement to my class and it really helped to reinforce the grammatical concepts. Also, my Spanish class was all in Spanish, even the grammar explanations, and I really appreciated how clearly this book explained the concepts in English.

I'm now moving on to more advanced Spanish exercises, but I will keep this book handy as a reference. The explanations are really, very good.

The vocabulary introduced in the book is also very comprehensive for the most common words and phrases in many aspects of daily life. However, there is an inclination toward Latin American Spanish vocabulary rather than Castilian Spanish.

The exercises are also good overall. But, each chapter and topic is isolated and the exercises do nothing to reinforce concepts learned in previous chapters. Therefore, this book is not the end-all-be-all program for learning Spanish. However, it's a great introduction to the grammar and could be an integral component of any beginner's study program.

Regarding the other reviewer's comment about the answer key being full of mistakes, I did find a few, but it by no means rendered the book useless. Perhaps he/she was using an earlier edition and the mistakes have since been corrected.

Fantastic series!

What kind of learner am I?
I teach in a university-based adult education program, where many of my students are native Spanish speakers. My high school and college Spanish classes were a distant memory, but when I chose this book and its companions (pronouns and verbs), I DID remember enough to communicate at a basic level. I've found this series excellent for improving my Spanish enough for my students to comment enthusiastically after a relatively short time. I have no instructor, but I learn well from books, and I already knew how to pronounce Spanish words. For someone else in my position, I can't recommend this series highly enough--it's the best I found after extensive searching, library loans, etc.

Getting the most from this product:
I also recommend getting all three books (complete grammar, pronouns, and verbs) as I did. I've found that it's been helpful to work through a few sections in one book, switch to one of the others, and move ahead in similar jags through all three at once. I can tell when to switch by when I start to feel like I'm getting in over my head--I think it would be difficult to learn alone using just one of these.

Another tip: This series is pure grammar, but there's plenty of culture and literature available free online. I've supplemented the books by reading Spanish-language newspapers online (my favorite seems to be the BBC/Latin America), pasting the text into www.freetranslation.com to check my reading as needed. Often, I've translated these in their entirety for practice (the free translation's enough to understand, but not a particularly good translation). I also found a Spanish-speaking penpal by visiting Spanish chatrooms, and write back and forth frequently as a way to practice my written Spanish. These activities have provided the learning richness that simple grammar texts aren't intended to offer.

Who shouldn't use this?
However, if (for example) you know no (or almost no) Spanish now or remember very little vocabulary, this would be a poor choice. It definitely assumes some level of familiarity with the language.

This book covers all parts of the spanish grammar exceptionally. It not only explains the focused topic in a chapter clearly and give a lot of exercises to let the reader practice, it also contains concepts from other chapters, which reinforces understanding of other chapters. The fact that this book can be covered in any order is also very good.

The vocabulary used in here is also quite complete, but only a fraction is in the glossary (the others should be mostly known at this level anyway). Be sure to have a spanish dictionary handy when learning, as always.