(Part 2) Best products from r/learnspanish

This is a great little review book of grammar exercises for ~$7 on Amazon (used).
https://www.amazon.com/Ultimate-Spanish-Practice-Foreign-Language/dp/0071847588

I like the Anki flashcard app for reviewing vocabulary.

Children's television is great for listening practice. It can be helpful to think about what region you'll be visiting most often and consume their local media as slang can vary greatly. (I generally consume Argentine media as that's where I visit most frequently: Mundo Zamba and Tiranos Temblad are two good examples on YouTube).

MeetUp.com often has conversation groups that meet for lunch of coffee to get some low-pressure speaking practice in. Universities usually have clubs that do the same.

Reading material I also recommend starting with children's stories. And again I focus my experiences on Argentina, e.g. Luis Pescetti and Pablo de Santis

Hey! I'll start with your second question. We actually released a book aimed for beginners/intermediate learners. The book has 20 short stories in Spanish and includes a summary in English as well as a good sized vocabulary.

 

You can find that book here: https://www.amazon.com/Spanish-Short-Stories-Beginners-Captivating-ebook/dp/B078WRXYM7/keywords=spanish+short+stories+for+beginners

 

As for your first question. Duolingo is the most popular app but Busuu is good too. However, since it's your accent that you want to practice, I'd watch videos on Youtube, Netflix and even Audiobooks.

 

Good luck!

The "practice makes perfect" series is fantastic. If you work through "spanish verb tenses" (https://www.amazon.com/Dorothy-Richmond/dp/126045245X/ref=mp_s_a_1_3?keywords=practice+makes+perfect+spanish&qid=1571756856&sprefix=practice+makes&sr=8-3) and "spanish pronouns and prepositions" (https://www.amazon.com/Dorothy-Richmond/dp/1259586324/ref=mp_s_a_1_6?keywords=practice+makes+perfect+spanish&qid=1571756913&sprefix=practice+makes&sr=8-6) you'll have a pretty solid grammatical base.

The "spanish conversation" workbook from the same series is really good too, although more useful once you're at around a B1 level.

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!

For a grammar book, I would suggest either the Practice Makes Perfect Spanish series, since they have a lot of different workbooks on different subjects. They have one called Basic Spanish which targets beginners: link

Also, there's the Easy Spanish Step by Step series: link

Both have exercises, vocabulary and answer keys to everything so for written practice, they can be pretty helpful!

Practice Makes Perfect Spanish... https://www.amazon.com/dp/0071841857?ref=ppx_pop_mob_ap_share

I really like this workbook-there are a ton of examples and many english sentences, expressions and paragraphs that you translate into Spanish. I find it very challenging and interesting.
I like grammar so please keep that in mind.

if you study Spanish you should take a phonology/phonetics class. I just took one in the spring after studying for like 5 years and although i intuitively got the gist of most things It blew my mind when I realized how logical the pronunciation and orthography of the language is. it’s actually super cool to take a class like this. I can recommend u a concise book on phonetics and phonology if u would like

Edit: this is a link to the book
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0942566572/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_awdb_t1_8fCtDbHH6ZK58

Im currently going through Easy Spanish Step-by Step by Barbara Bregstein. It has pretty decent explanations with exercises that follow. They are decently priced on amazon.

I would also suggest the library. Mine has a lot of audio books including pimsleur, subscription to Mango languages free for members and tons of other resources.

This is the first one:
https://www.amazon.com/Spanish-Step-Step-Barbara-Bregstein/dp/0071463380/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1524764568&sr=8-3&keywords=easy+spanish

I also bought the second book but have not started it:
https://www.amazon.com/Advanced-Spanish-Step-Step-Accelerated/dp/0071768734/ref=pd_sim_14_3?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=0071768734&pd_rd_r=QHCHPW7S4D9WRY7E7J42&pd_rd_w=lSsan&pd_rd_wg=HDnwj&psc=1&refRID=QHCHPW7S4D9WRY7E7J42

I also bought this book to help with verbs because verbs are a huge part of spanish
https://www.amazon.com/Ultimate-Spanish-Review-Practice-Second/dp/0071797831/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1524764647&sr=1-1&keywords=The+ultimate+spanish+verb

I enjoyed reading the Pobre Ana series. They start as pretty basic and gradually get more difficult. There's a complete dictionary in the back of each book that translates every word that has been used in the book. The writing is so basic and "bad" that it is actually funny/enjoyable to read. I also found it very encouraging and gratifying to be able to read a book entirely in Spanish and be able to understand it.

https://www.amazon.com/Pobre-Ana-Totalmente-Espanol-Spanish/dp/092972447X

I took Spanish in college a few years back and the textbook we used was pretty great. In fact, I still have it and refer to it. Because it is a textbook, getting a new edition is INSANELY expensive. You can definitely get an older edition and not lose out in any way. It is called Claro que si!.

Last November I went to Argentina with essentially no knowledge of Spanish. I started off using this. It's pretty solid. The section on grammar is really short, but it has plenty of conversational phrases, a very basic dictionary, and simple conjugation charts for maybe 15 or so of the most frequently used verbs.

It was pretty helpful. I also used this book as an introduction to grammar: http://www.amazon.com/English-Grammar-Students-Spanish-Learning/dp/0934034303

You can pick up a decent 2 way dictionary in BsAs, there are bookstores everywhere. Walrus Books sells mostly used English language books but I found a cheap Spanish-English dictionary there as well as one of those "500 verb conjugations" books.

Enjoy your time in Argentina!


Edit: Obviously the book isn't specific to Argentine Spanish, but you'll figure it out quickly.


The vos form is simple; just drop the i from the vosotros form, unless the i is an í in which case there won't a preceding é or á. And in the pretérito vos is identical to tú. And in the imperativo just drop the d of the vosotros form, and stress the final syllable.


There are differences in a lot of vocabulary, but people will understand you fine and fill you in on what the Argentine word choice would be if you ask them to.

• The Duolingo Spanish course might be helpful, and you don't have to start at the beginning if it's too easy for you.
  
• Memrise is a great resource for learning vocabulary.
  
• Notes in Spanish is a podcast presented by a Spanish/British couple and is a really lovely way to get into conversational Spanish.
  
• iTalki is a really nice way to connect with Spanish teachers in Spain and Latin America, and they often charge much less than Spanish teachers in the UK would.
  
• Lang8 is a service where you write in Spanish and native speakers can correct you, and you can do the same for them.
  
• The Michael Thomas course could also be a nice way to learn.
  
  I took GCSE Spanish over a decade ago and didn't learn much, but I decided to start again a couple of years ago and now I spend a lot of time in Spain speaking Spanish without many issues. I used a combination of the resources above.

Well just from skimming the syllabus the class looks like it is geared more toward police officers than paralegals, so I’m not sure how much overlap they would have with each other as far as legal vocabulary. The intro part seems fine though. I think going to Mexico would help her learn the language in general, but I’m not too familiar with any programs that specifically focus on the legal field.

I found this. It might be a good resource. It’s for people who don’t have a lot of Spanish background:

https://www.amazon.com/Spanish-Attorneys-Paralegals-Audio-CDs/dp/0764196111

Penguin books releases a series called Cuentos in Espanol. Basically, they are proper short stories by great writers but one page is in Spanish and the opposite has the literal translation in English. Really great resource and you don't feel like a 4 year old.

Here's one:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Spanish-Short-Stories-Cuentos-Parallel/dp/0140265414/ref=sr_1_8?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1332104846&sr=1-8

Some of it is specifying what protocols should be in place for the rendering of the text (in this case UTF-8), another part is keeping track of what search query was used (in this case "fluent forever"). There are other segments of the URL that signify other things, but you get the idea. Nothing out of the ordinary here.

If you want the best possible looking URL then you want:

http://www.amazon.com/Fluent-Forever-Learn-Language-Forget-ebook/dp/B00IBZ405W

Unsee it, because that's got nothing to do with how the subjunctive mood works. I'd really recommend investing in a good guide to the subject, like Demystifying the Spanish Subjunctive.

Octavio Paz - "El laberinto de la soledad" its a book you must read if you want to understand the origin of our vast culture that defined our language including the traditional slang.

https://www.amazon.com/El-laberinto-soledad-Octavio-Paz/dp/0140258833

Greetings from Mexico :D