Reddit mentions of Practice Makes Perfect: Complete Spanish Grammar, Premium Third Edition

I recommend that you use Assimil Spanish. I am currently using it and it has helped me a lot with learning Spanish. It will teach you useful vocabulary over 2,000 words, with native audio, and colloquial speech.

You can also using Lingvist to learn more vocabulary that isn't in Assimil Spanish.

You can use Coffee Break Spanish (from iTunes Free) for when you're walking, jogging, etc. with Assimil's audio. I would avoid Michel Thomas and Pimsleur. Pimsleur because it's slow as hell and doesn't teach enough vocabulary. Michel Thomas because he students are stupid as hell, and his voice is annoying.

Language Transfer is much better than Michel Thomas because the student is really smart, the course is longer and goes into much better details about the language. the vocabulary is much better too than Michel Thomas and Pimsleur.

I would avoid Duolingo at all cost.

Here's why I hate the Duolingo Spanish course:
> The lack of decent/useful vocabulary. It doesn't explain the difference between the imperfect/preterite. Barely touches the subjunctive. Only teaches the ir a (I'm going) form of future, but not the future tense. It mainly wants literal translations than colloquial. Teaches way too many synonyms. The indirect/direct objects are barely touched. Overly uses the subject pronouns. If you get words wrong, it will throw new words at you that aren't even taught in the course so you can't really learn the words it does to teach. Doesn't really highlight the difference between the verbs that change in meaning between preterite and imperfect. Doesn't teach vosotros (yes I know it isn't used in Latin America), but there are books, movies, and if you travel to Spain, you will need to learn it. Should learn it even if you don't plan to use it. It's just poorly designed. Hopefully they will make a better one later on.

Buy a great grammar book. I like Gramática de uso del Español. I own this book and it's really great. The only problem is that it's all in Spanish with no English. After you do most of Assimil and Lingvist, you'll be able to read it with no problem and be able to pick up unknown vocabulary easily.

If you don't want to wait, you can buy Practice Makes Perfect Complete Spanish. It's in English.

Use SpanishDict and Pons for your dictionaries online. They're free to use.

You can use Memrise for learning vocabulary. I use it religiously and I benefit from it. I also have my Assimil Spanish vocabulary courses on there for when you use Assimil. Just search for them.

Two recommendations:

1. If you're looking for a comprehensive course, *including* grammar (and of course also vocabulary, listening practice, etc.), then probably the best regarded in the language learning community is the Teach Yourself series. It looks like the courses are now called "Complete X", for example: https://smile.amazon.com/Complete-Spanish-Two-Audio-CDs/dp/1444177249/
   
   1. Note that Teach Yourself is the name of the company, which is focused on language learning materials; this is not the same as all of those "Teach Yourself C++ in 7 Days" books.
      
2. If you're looking to learn/drill grammar *specifically*, the best is probably Practice Makes Perfect, e.g. https://smile.amazon.com/Practice-Makes-Perfect-Complete-Spanish/dp/1259584194/ They have ones for overall grammar, as well as ones specifically for verb tenses, pronouns and prepositions, etc.

I have a ton of resources. I'm currently working through the book Easy Spanish Step by Step but I also have Complete Spanish Grammar. I'm also doing Pimsleur, Duolingo, and the language transfer course. It's been taking me a long time to get through each of these since my time is split between each.

I can't say any of these are tailored towards conversational practice though. Do you know any beginner books that are good for that?

> Yes, I would like to learn the European accent because thats what's closest to me

The good thing is that both Coffee Break and Lingvist use European Spanish.

> Does the English course give grammatical information as well?

The English -> Spanish course does have some grammar tips, but only on the desktop version. Also this course is known as one of the worst duolingo courses.

I think Lingvist would be better because it has much better audio (native?) over duo's bad text-to-speech. Plus it supposedly teaches about twice as much vocabulary.

For grammar, in my opinion I think you can get by with just Coffee Break & Lingvist in the early beginner stages. Then once you get to an intermediate level you could try an intermediate grammar workbook such as https://www.amazon.de/Practice-Perfect-Complete-Spanish-Grammar/dp/1259584194

Dat is natuurlijk het lastige van een taal leren, wat is vooruitgang? Ik kon me na 2-3 maanden van half werk (eigenlijk alleen duolingo en wat luisteren naar CoffeeBreak Spanish) prima verstaanbaar maken op vakantie in restaurants, taxi's, hotels, e.d., mocht je dat een goede indicatie vinden.

Heb het helaas een beetje laten verzakken daarna en is dan toch wel weer even lastig terug in te komen. Merkte zelf wel dat het lastig was om iets terug te zoeken. Ben nu op zoek naar een A5 schriftje met tabbladen zodat ik daar makkelijk op onderwerp wat simpelere aantekeningen in kan maken. Denk ook wel dat een simpel boekje hierbij zou kunnen helpen. Hoor op /r/learnspanish altijd wel goede verhalen over de "Practice Makes Perfect"-serie, maar heb daar zelf geen ervaring mee.

Edit:

Lees net in je andere comment dat je met zulke methodes toch de grammatica lastig vind. Ik denk dat je wel gebaad zou zijn met iets als Practice Makes Perfect: Complete Spanish Grammar.

If that's all you're looking for, I suggest running a search on Amazon for Spanish grammar books, then using the "look inside" feature to review the table of contents. The book I linked to before doesn't have a very descriptive table of contents, but this one does and I'm sure you can find others like it to make sure you're not missing anything. Good luck!