Books and Other Resources to Help You Learn Spanish
If you want to learn Spanish without taking classes, you can make a lot of progress on your own. There are audio CD’s and audio-books to aid you. There are plenty of books you can buy to help you learn Spanish more easily, as well.
A nifty book to have as you learn Spanish is 1001 Most Useful Spanish Words (Beginners’ Guide), by Seymour Resnick. With only 55 pages, this book provides you a good collection of vocabulary. This book lists words by categories such as food, time, and family. The words are also in a dictionary type listing alphabetically. The words are defined and used in a sentence. Popular phrases using the words are given. It is helpful to anyone trying to learn Spanish.
Sticking with the numbers theme, there is another book you can get tremendous help from as you learn Spanish. It is called 2000+ Essential Spanish Verbs: Learn the Forms, Master the Tenses, and Speak Fluently, put out by Living Language. This book makes it so easy to learn Spanish verbs; you’ll wonder why you ever thought it would be difficult. It covers conjugations, irregular forms, and teaches you to form tenses. It has answers to many tricky questions on verbs.
If you’re a busy type, perhaps you have free time in your car or sitting in a taxi or while you are commuting to work. Learn in Your Car Spanish Complete Language Course is a tool to help you learn Spanish, written by Henry N. Raymond and Oscar M. Ramirez. You just play the CD’s in your car, or anywhere else you’d like to, and repeat after the speaker. The CD’s progress from the easiest to the most advanced. You will learn enough about basic Spanish dialogue to begin to join in conversations with Spanish speaking people. Alternatively, you could convert the CD into MP3 format and play it with and iPod or any MP3 player.
If you’re a stickler for details, you might be interested in a book called Spanish Grammar for Independent Learners, by Arie Vicente. This book covers everything you need to know about grammar. It has all the information neatly arranged for easy access. As you try to learn Spanish, you will come across sentences you just know you don’t have right. This book has a system to troubleshoot your language and help you figure out what you mean to say.
For a taste of Spanish literature, try First Spanish Reader: A Beginner’s Dual Language Book, edited by Angel Flores. You will find stories old and new within its pages. You can learn Spanish almost effortlessly by reading these short stories and proverbs. The easiest ones are first, and more difficult verb tenses are used later on. The stories are interesting and make it fun to learn Spanish.
The Language Heretic’s Super Crash Course in Spanish Conversation and Culture: GET BY in Spanish in One to Three Weeks is a unique book by L. Adams. It cuts through all the technical aspects of language learning in short order. The focus of the book is simply to give you enough language skills to get you into conversations so that you can learn Spanish from there. It never claims to make you a scholar.
With all the books and CD’s on how to learn Spanish, you should be able to find books that will make your study easier. You can check them out at a library, but to get the most good out of them, you usually need to purchase them. However, that’s not much to spend if you want to learn Spanish.
In addition to books and CDs, you should also consider watching Spanish movies, hopefully with English subtitles, so that you will get the gist of the movie. By watching these movies, you will get a feel of how the language is spoken. It’s advisable to get the DVD of that movie, so that you can watch over and over again, and listen carefully to words that are spoken.