Amazon.com: Customer reviews: Easy Spanish Step-by-Step

An very well organized, complete, and smoothly presented overview of essential Spanish

Reviewed in the United States on August 7, 2022

I actually bought this book in 2016, and for whatever mistaken reason I didn't start working through it until today. Since 2016 I've managed to learn, completely on my own, a fair amount of Spanish from a huge range of resources. However, with all the reading, vocabulary building, and even several trips to Spanish-speaking countries, I've been frustrated by my relative lack of progress in (a) speaking Spanish spontaneously or (b) understanding the everyday Spanish spoken by natives. That means that when I run into someone who knows some English, I can usually limp my way through. But when I run into someone who knows NO English, it is pretty nearly always a complete fail to communicate.

I've been trying to figure out, for a while now, what is missing and what I can do about it. One of my challenges is I don't even know English grammar in a formal sense. Another issue has been that the thousands of words of Spanish I've memorized, have not been presented – and exercised – in a sufficiently methodical and interesting way. Lack of auditory and spoke practice has been another issue. Another has been little practice in sentence construction, because material is either too trivial or too complicated.

Through time I've attempted to address many of these impediments. However, I haven't found a single, simple, practical, ENGAGING book to tie everything together . . . Until now. This book is just short of 300 pages, and it somehow manages to find that middle ground of teaching complete intermediate Spanish, without being overwhelming.

How does it do this? Vocabulary words are CAREFULLY chosen and presented to fit together into sentences to cover a huge range of most-common situations. For example, in an early chapter this book presents numbers, times of day, months, seasons, etc. and ties all these things together. Another thing I noticed is that the words which are covered are generally well-balanced, using things such as opposites, so they are learned more memorably and able to be interchanged within sentences. It's a small thing - which most books neglect - which makes the material flow really well.

A lot of essential "glue" words and syntax is presented and EXPLAINED in a smooth, complete way I've not seen before. An example of this is the presentation of que, tan, and como on pages 113-1115. These words are ESSENTIAL and a large part of natural speech, but I've never been able to understand them well enough, in context, to feel comfortable using them in my own phrasing.

I'm going to leave my review off here, because I broke away after getting to page 120 to write this recommendation. This is NOT a “beginner” book. But it is also not a particularly advanced nor complicated book. That is quite a balancing act, which most Spanish books fail at rather miserably. So what is it? Well, I suspect (but will never know) it is the sort of book a smart beginner would benefit immensely from getting early on and reading, and reviewing, at sensible intervals. I have a funny feeling that if I had found and read this book 6 years ago I would have made considerably more progress, more naturally, than I otherwise made cramming vocabulary and syntax in small, disjointed chunks.

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Eric F.

Excellent Book and could be a great Textbook

Reviewed in the United States on December 1, 2023

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Easy Spanish Step by Step is an excellent book. I didn't expect a whole lot and being it was a used book, I wouldn't have been out much. I was surprised and pleased with what I learned. This would be an excellent Spanish class textbook. It is clear, concise, and to the point. Whomever had this book before me didn't use it beyond half of the first chapter. I was able to erase most of the answers in the exercises except for one. That being said, it was like a brand new book at half the price. Just like when I was in college. I bought used textbooks whenever I could find them to save money. Some of them had good notes. I think if you are serious about learning Spanish for the first time or like me relearning what you have forgotten, I don't think you will be disappointed in my opinion. But the emphasis is on serious. Many of the Spanish books are NOT written for the traveler to SPAIN but in this case to Mexico, Central, and South America. (except for Brazil where they speak Portuguese. But Spanish is also spoken)

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Ken Kardash

five stars for structure

Reviewed in the United States on January 17, 2017

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As someone who has worked hard to achieve fluency in a second language as an adult, I feel I have some insights into what is required. The first priority, especially if you have limited study time, is how to structure your learning. This is where this book shines, and why I would recommend it. It divides the task into logical, sequential steps that build upon each other, in the order you would learn them if it was your first language, saving verb tenses for later. The reading exercises at the end of each chapter are a useful and motivating tool, but ideally they would have reinforced vocabulary already learned, rather than requiring footnotes! The insertion of long summary lists of verbs and nouns is not by itself very conducive to learning. An appended dictionary of selected words would have been better. Finally, no book is as useful for verbal learning as audio material, but this one is a good companion. Personally I have found the Pimsleur recordings most helpful - I have no vested interest, just saying.

Overall, if you had time or space for only one introductory Spanish text, this would be a good choice. It will make it easier, but not easy!

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Drew R.

Step by Step approach to easily mastering Spanish grammar

Reviewed in the United States on July 16, 2016

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Easy Spanish Step By Step is a book that is written by Barbara Bregstein. She is a translator and Spanish professor with more than 30 years of experience teaching Spanish in New York City colleges.

The book is based upon the concept that the quickest way to learn Spanish is by having a solid foundation in the basics of Spanish grammar. There are number of things that I really like about this book:

1. The author gives down-to-earth explanations when explaining the rules and concepts of Spanish grammar. She does a great job breaking-down these complex rules and topics of Spanish grammar so that anyone can easily understand them.
2. According to the author, she covers over 300 verbs in this book. Of course, I didn’t bother to count them :-)
3. The book has a lot of reading passages to help you improve your reading comprehension skills in Spanish.
4. What I like most about Easy Spanish Step By Step is that the book has lots of exercises to help reinforce the Spanish that you are learning. On the average, each of the 13 chapters have 5 or 6 exercises.

One thing that really stands out about this book is that it is very thorough. Besides teaching basic Spanish such as numbers, dates, time, days and months, the author also covers just about every Spanish grammar topic imaginable. From nouns, articles, and adjectives to differentiating between the Spanish verbs “ser” and “estar.” From subject pronouns, direct pronouns, indirect pronouns, and interrogative words, all the way to regular verbs and irregular verbs. From Spanish adjectives and adverbs all the way to present tense verbs and future tense verbs. And of course she covers those two topics that, we, native English speakers find most challenging about Spanish grammar: reflexive verbs and the Spanish subjunctive.

When using this book, I do recommend that you follow the author’s advice. She recommends that you do not use the book as a reference book by skipping around from one part to another. Instead she recommends that you take advantage of the grammatical progression of the book and study each chapter one after the other so that you can easily learn and retain the material. Hence the name Easy Spanish Step-By-Step.

In closing, I’ll leave you with the 3 learning-Spanish resources which are currently my favorites. (My list of favorites changes from time to time so you may want to check my list periodically.):

UPDATED 02/10/2023

1. Learn Spanish for Beginners and Adults: Learning Spanish Like Crazy Level One – New and Improved Version (Lessons 1 to 30) This is my favorite program for learning how to actually speak the language and how to understand spoken Spanish even it is spoken by fast-speaking, everyday native Spanish speakers (as opposed to Spanish instructors and airline personnel). With that said, it is not one of the best for learning how to read and write the language. For reading and writing there are far better choices. But to accomplish spoken fluency which includes developing a native-like accent and pronunciation, and being able to understand even fast speaking native speakers, this is the best I've found.

2. 501 Spanish Verbs, 8th edition (501 Verb Series) . If you think you can accomplish fluency in Spanish as an adult without mastering conjugating Spanish verbs, you are only fooling yourself. This book is an absolute essential resource for learning how to conjugate Spanish verbs. It will show you how to conjugate every Spanish verb tense imaginable. The version I have also includes a bonus CD which teaches both regular verbs and irregular verbs.

3. Learn Spanish For Adult Beginners: 3 Books in 1: Speak Spanish In 30 Days! (Learn Spanish For Adults) This is a very comprehensive 3-Books-In-1 learning-Spanish book and a new favorite of mine. The first two books cover Spanish grammar as well as helpful Spanish phrases. The third book consists of very short but interesting stories to help you to learn to read Spanish.

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AdMoMom

Just what I wanted

Reviewed in the United States on May 14, 2024

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This is the perfect companion to a certain on-line language learning app. This gives me more exercises, more explanations, and a LOT more vocabulary! I also use it to go back and review grammar, sentence-building, and comprehension. Es muy bueno!

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RenaJH

This book makes learning Spanish fun and easy.

Reviewed in the United States on May 25, 2024

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I like how each lesson is presented. It makes learning spanish easy and fun. This book is perfect for anyone learning spanish for the first time.

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Katherine C. Rohloff

Grammar- great! Vocabulary- not so much

Reviewed in the United States on September 11, 2013

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I have studied several romance languages, and am happy to say that this book (I am currently in chapter six) is *great* at explaining grammar and conjugating verbs and so forth. Everything makes sense, is clearly outlined, and no grammar is used before it is explained.

I wish I could say the same for vocabulary. I have already come upon multiple cases where the text expects you to know a word without having defined it. (The first couple of chapters I let it slide as contextual clues were abundant, but later on it became more of an issue.) Also the choice of vocabulary is odd- two words for waiter, I think in the same chapter? No discussion or mention of the fact that both entender and comprender mean ¨to understand¨, thought they are both defined that way within ten pages of each other? And the vocabulary ¨lists¨ of what to learn each chapter are not at all clearly defined so you never know what you're supposed to memorize or might turn up later, and some words appear on such ¨lists¨ multiple times!

The author does a great job teaching the grammar, I just think the book could use a thorough editor to clean up the little stuff like this. I haven't been able to use this book except for what I have ready access to the SpanishDict website to look up vocabulary. Oh! And the app advertised on the back cover is a waste of time, skip it and go find the flashcard sets on Quizlet.

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