Reddit mentions of NTC's Dictionary of Spanish Cognates Thematically Organized

A couple posts I made on this:

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I know it may seem like I'm stating the obvious, but the most important resource is other people. You can study all the books you can find, buy workbooks, take quizzes, and ace all your tests, but unless you are speaking with people on at least a semi-regular basis, even if they're not native, or even a relative beginning like you, you're at best just gonna learn to put together robotic-sounding sentences, and at worst not gonna learn anything at all. Or even worse, get discouraged with your lack of progress, or just sheer boredom, and give up entirely! The important thing is that you're keeping your brain active in piecing together the language and its grammar. Yes, I know there is always that 1/1,000,000 case of some sort of linguistic savant that can skip the practice and just get it (my dad knew a guy like that), but if you're in this subreddit, that's not you.

If you haven't done this yet, instead of looking for courses or workbooks, put time aside to make this happen, so you're speaking for at least a few hours a week. Check meetup.com for events near you. Google search for language exchange websites and see who would be willing to trade you English practice for Spanish practice, maybe even over Skype. Make excuses to meet-up with your Spanish-speaking friends every now and then and try to work as much Spanish into hanging out as possible (I would recommend against meeting up for the explicit purpose of practicing, your friends will get impatient. Make it a part of something else.).

So assuming you've done the above (not like you would skip to this part and say "yeah I'll get around to it" or anything like that...), at least for me, I had a very small amount of resources that I used/still use. They just so happen to be extremely powerful and effective though. I got a to a conversational level after just my first two classes, cause I really took any opportunity available to practice outside of class. This type of book helped me get there much quicker:

https://www.amazon.com/Dictionary-Spanish-Cognates-Thematically-Organized/dp/0844279625/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1492034729&sr=8-5&keywords=english+spanish+cognates

Mine wasn't this exact one, I couldn't tell you the name of the specific book cause it was quite a while ago (and if you keep it up, all of a sudden 12 years will pass by, and you can't believe it was that long ago since you started), but any decent English-Spanish Cognate book should do. It gives you a huge jump start by allowing you to transfer a large amount of English vocabulary into Spanish. It was tremendously helpful when I was a complete n00b.

Beyond that, I've only really used three resources, and it's all I seem to need 98% of the time. They are:

1. Google Translate --A basic translator is a lot more effective than people realize, as the first thing that probably popped into your head is how bad the many of the translation are. The trick is to know what to put in it, and more importantly what not to, and based on what you put in, the likelihood that you got a good translation. First of all, do not put entire paragraphs, or blocks of text. It will come out ridiculous (take a paragraph from any book or article, translate it into Spanish, and then right back to English, for comedic effect). Second, even whole sentences are likely not gonna have a good result. The key is to put in about 1-3 words at a time (above 3 and you're usually asking for it), and then add a few words past your initial 1-3 to see how the translator morphs your entry, to give you an idea how it's treating not just the words, but the concepts behind them). If you're still having a lot of trouble finding it useful, look for some online tips and guides before tossing it aside.
   
2. Wordreference.com --Really, really an incredible tool for learning a large variety of languages. An obvious issue you're going to have with the translator is words with multiple meanings. A typical translator is usually very poor at picking up the semantic meaning of a specific word in relation to the words around it, which will often lead to choosing the wrong meaning for that particular situation (for example, translating to English the word 'hacer'. It's not gonna easily tell if it's 'to do' or 'to make'). And that's why there's wordreference. Entire any one word, going from one language to another, and it will not only give you a translation and a definition for every possible meaning of the word, it will give you an example sentence! On top of that, if by chance the meaning you were looking for isn't there, it will automatically add relevant threads from its very active forum to the end of your search, so you can see what other people might say. I really don't need to say more, go ahead and take a look!
   
3. Verbix.com --What if there was like, a language, right? And it had, like verbs, and you wanted to know like, how they conjugate? That's the gist here, choose one out of about 50 languages, and it will give you every possible conjugation for any word you enter in that language, on a single page! Nifty!
   
   That's about it. I've found these tools to be great, and rarely do I need much more.
   
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   In short, learn the LANGUAGE for YOU and HAVE FUN, don’t learn it for people who are ultimately just hypothetical constructions in your head of the people you MIGHT meet, in hopes of getting a sense of how to avoid embarrassing yourself at all. Now you’re learning for them, and you’re not learning the words, phrases and meanings that are fun an interesting to you. Learn the language the way you want, however inefficient, because you know you’ll stick to it and are in no rush. Laugh with people, even though you know they’re actually laughing at you, cause now you’ve learned to brush things off like a boss. And most importantly use and ABUSE the syntax of the language as creatively as possible so you can try to eventually get close to having the feel of a native speaker (when you walk be a native speaker, think of just how many shitty puns they’ve made in their life, and then stop feeling bad). Do all this, and you are now PASSIONATE about learning it. Without getting here, you will ultimately end up on the reserved side, and one way or another be just translating from your language.
   
   And I haven’t even mentioned the best part of passion. The fact that it’s only the true way to be boss at the language is only secondary, the real benefit is that it completely removes any requirement of discipline in learning the language, cause if you really want to do something, you don’t need discipline to do it. The next thing you know, 5 years have gone by, you’re not that far from fluent, people tell you ‘man I wish I could learn a foreign language’ and you tell them ‘of course you can too’ as a means to not show that that statement made you feel really awesome. You also lived in a native country of that language for a year, cause, well of course you would! You’re passionate about it, and of course you made that fucking trip happen, how could you not? And you know all those awkward moments and times you embarrassed yourself in front of those new friends in that country, those awesome people you now know that you never expected to have in your life when you started this journey? They now think all that shit was cute, and use the nonsensical phrases you invented ironically in conversation with you. You didn’t even realize the reason they probably see it as cute is so they can embarrass you with it. You also didn’t realize that the only way this could happen consistently is that you’ve mastered the details of this language enough that you too recognize how awkward it is, in any context. Well now, aren’t you a boss? The best part is that people now even think you’re talented or a hard worker, or some other unlikely bullshit. You know better, you just had fun, and then five years went by, because when you started this, you were one of the few who was brave enough to truly put their balls out there, and when the cold wind of embarrassment came blowing, you simply sacked up.
   
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   Also, I recently found a site called language-exchanges.org. You could probably find a native speaker to speak with on a regular basis there.