Your textbook reviews - good and bad
A recent suggestion by others to pick up "Breaking Out of Beginner's Spanish" made me think of a learning-Spanish book I had recently finished, and I thought it might be helpful for others to share their experiences with either Spanish or English language textbooks and workbooks.
I'll start with the book I just went through, Berlitz's "5-Minute Spanish." It's pretty bad. I picked it up since I thought a workbook would make for more active learning. Unfortunately many of the exercises are simply inane, words and concepts seem to pop out of nowhere, and the answer key contains numerous errors, which is particularly unforgivable in a book of this nature. The whole thing leaves the impression of something that was thrown together quickly while the editing department was on vacation.
¿Qué está en su estante para libros o en su cubo de la basura?
1 Answer
Although I do like the Berlitz "501 Verb Book", I have found several of their other products to be a big disappointment, especially the learning C.D.'s which were not cheap.
I have found "The Everything Spanish Grammar Book" to be helpful. There are several books in this series and they do a good job of covering the basics and explaining things well.
I tend to be involved with several books at a time. It seems to keep me more interested. I recently purchased "Barron's Complete Spanish Grammar Review" and it has been beneficial so far.
To me, it seems that it is difficult to find the "perfect" book. I have found this to be true with music text books as well. It seems that certain authors are excellent when covering one topic, but seem to be lacking in other areas. Once in a great while, a book comes along that seems to do a good job covering all of the material. But those books are rare gems and usually wind up dog-eared, underlined, etc. 
