Reviews

Hundreds of resources to help you teach yourself

Perfect Your Spanish Verb Tenses

4 Spanish, Books

This book can be your companion for a review of the present tense, reflexive verbs, irregular verbs, present progressive, preterite, imperfect, future, conditional, present perfect, past perfect, imperative, subjunctive, and more. You can be a beginner and use it, but…

VocabuLearn Spanish CDs Are Now Hard to Find, But MP3s Are Not

3-5 Spanish, Audio Lessons, Vocabulary

VocabuLearn Spanish is not glamorous, but it is useful. It works like this: a voice tells you a word in English, then you come up with the equivalent in Spanish, then you are told the answer, which you have a…

Practice Makes Perfect: Complete Spanish Grammar

3-5 Spanish, Books

Like other books in the sprawling Practice Makes Perfect series from McGraw-Hill, this one, written by Gilda Nissenberg, is packed with exercises. Some are good, but some could be better. I ended up skipping many of them. …

For a Verb Workout

3-5 Spanish, Books

“If you are a true beginner,” writes author Frank H. Nuessel in the introduction to Barron’s Spanish Verb Workbook, “you will find that this book makes no assumptions. You will learn about the other [i.e., non-verb]…

Oxford Learner’s Spanish Dictionary: I Like the Heft of This

3 Spanish, Books, Dictionaries, Kids

What makes this a learner’s dictionary as opposed to a regular dictionary is that this one has word tips and examples for the language newcomer. I am sort of a hard-core traditionalist about dictionaries, so I didn’t take…

You Can Speak the Word You Want Translated...

5 Arabic, Dutch, English, French, General, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Irish, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Yiddish, Apps, Dictionaries

I have a tendency not to get around to downloading iPhone apps onto my iPhone, but fortunately I have a husband who will take my phone and do it for me. I’m very glad he stuck this app on…

Spanish Grammar Drills: Lots of Good Translation Exercises

4 Spanish, Books

“If you’ve picked up this book,” writes Rogelio Alonso Vallecillos (fabulous name!) in Spanish Verb Drills, “you know that to learn a language well—to read and write and to understand others and be understood yourself—at…

Live Lingua: Keeping the Free FSI Language Courses Alive

Arabic, Dutch, French, General, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Audio Lessons, Websites

These Foreign Service Institute language courses were recommended by a reader. I haven’t tried them, but the holdings are extensive and consist of older courses that are now in the public domain. They are also free, so the main…

Search for Gujarathi, Yiddish, and More!

5 Arabic, Dutch, English, French, General, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Irish, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Yiddish, Websites

The Modern Language Association has a spectacular online language map showing the languages of the U.S., as well as a data center with searchable language information. For free!  These tools will be updated soon…

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