"Clever approach, empowering method for the true beginner learning Latin American Spanish. Tired layout, and somewhat frustrating as a 'resource' for the intermediate student." This book is aimed at the absolute beginner. For this particular audience, it has a very clever approach that runs counter to many teachers and language schools. For instance, it gets off to a good start by using verbs in the PAST tense, using only first person singular (me) and third person singular (anyone else). Then it introduces the infinitive and shows the reader how to create the infinitive from the verb in its past tense (rather than vice versa)! Then it jumps to simple future tense because it is easy to build from the infinitive. This is clever because it gets the student up and running, creating full sentences in the past, without having to introduce all of the verb stem-changing issues involved in using the present tense. Meanwhile it introduces many cognates and points out useful ways to think of nouns, and further along it introduces vocabulary in a practical way. Only after several chapters does it introduce "estar" and only later does get to a full conjugation of that verb, and when it does it puts it along side TENIR (to have), rather than SER, because there is an interesting symmetry in the past tense form of these two verbs. Only still much later does it finally get into the thicket of explaining the two very important verbs "to be" (estar/ser). Finally after 400 pages, she gets to the prsent tense. All of this is refreshingly practical and un-academic. By contrast, in my experience, most books and teachers and schools start with present tense, assuming that it is somehow more fundamental than the past tense, and they harp incessantly on ser/estar dilemma, unwilling to move beyond this un-intuitive concept (for an English speaker) and taking the wind out of the beginner's sails. However...there are no chapter titles and bullet objectives at the top of the page, and the layout (graphic design) is rather tired and bland. So the intermediate student may be frustrated because he cannot easily find his aproximate "place" in this thick book, or use it as a reference to glean its pearls, i.e., basic principles cleverly explained. He must peruse the Table of Contents, which gives an incomplete blurb on some topic(s) found in the chapter, then jump to a chapter and scan through sub-titles of sections which are not very revealing of the topics. The index helps somewhat, but it is limited. In short, the brilliant approach could be improved by a new printing with more descriptive titles/headings and more complete index.

This book is full of shortcuts and tricks to help with learning Spanish. The explanations are great and the exercises are helpful. I am writing out each exercise as I go through the book to help me retain what I am learning. This book would be a great companion to anyone learning Spanish.

This book does really well with strengthening the foundational portion of learning Spanish. I like that you are in control of how you use it. I took Spanish courses in middle school and high school but none of that experience resulted in me being confidently conversational. For me, this book is super helpful with reinforcing concepts that I'm struggling with. It's helping me understand when and why certain sentence structures / words/ conjugations are used. Memorizing the tips and tricks has been more efficient than trying to memorize a lot of words. I use this as a supplemental resource in conjunction with following content creators who teach Spanish, joining language learning communities online, Quizlet, and engaging with Spanish media. Also, most of the popular streaming services allow you to watch shows and movies in Spanish with English subtitles, and vice versa. In addition to improving my conversational skills, the concepts in this book have also improved my listening abilities. I definitely recommend this book for learners for beginner and intermediate level learners. Even as you progress in your language journey, it's nice to have handy to use as a quick reference.