601 Spanish Verbs (601 Verbs) (English and Spanish Edition) [Paperback]

Lori Langer de Ramirez (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 15, 2009 | ISBN-10: 9812686436 | ISBN-13: 978-9812686435 | Edition: Bilingual

601 Spanish Verbs is the only Spanish language verb book a student of any level will ever need. With full conjugations of every verb in 16 tenses and moods, finding the right ending and conquering irregular verbs has never been so easy. This full-color book features a free CD-ROM with words and phrases for your iPod ®.
What Actual Students Are Saying About 601 Spanish Verbs:

The text messaging and easy layout definitely gives this book an advantage-- I give it two thumbs up!- Gerren Crosson, Saint John's School, Houston, TX

I find the memory tips section to be extremely creative--it's helpful for trying to find little tricks to remember the verbs- Rebecca Lange, East Chapel Hill High School, Chapel Hill, North Carolina

Why Teachers Are Excited About 601 Spanish Verbs:

For the student that is struggling with conjugation, this is a tremendous resource- Susan Quintyne, Herricks Middle School, Herricks, NY

Memory tips are the way students learn best and teachers use these techniques to help students memorize lists - Catalina Nacher, Edgemont High School, Scarsdale, NY

The text messaging section is a fun way to grab students' attention and makes this book special and unique

- Rebecca Spring, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, North Carolina
Features:

100 more verbs than other verb books!

Sleek, stylish design with a clear and easy-to-read layout

FREE CD-ROM with 300 of the most essential phrases for your iPod®--both visually on screen and audio

Memory tips written by a memory expert for better studying

75 Must Know Spanish Verbs - Those most frequently used in speech, writing, and on tests

Spanish text message phrases for a fun learning experience

Verb endings are bolded to help students remember the changing part of the verb

Verb activity pages

Lists of popular test verbs, technology-related verbs, and spelling shortcuts

Alphabetical listing of all 601 Spanish verbs

601 Spanish Verbs Was Written By Experienced Teachers and Language Experts:

Lori Langer de Ramirez holds a Master's in Applied Linguistics and a Doctorate in Curriculum Teaching from Teacher's College, Columbia University. She has written and contributed to countless Spanish-language books, textbooks and articles, and promotes her methodology on her interactive website, miscositas.com.

Stephen Kehs has a B.A in Spanish and an M.A.T. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He has taught Spanish domestically and led several student trips abroad.

Asela Laguna-Mourao has a B.A. in Latin American Studies and an M.A. Ed. from St. Perer's College. She has studied abroad in Salamanca, Spain and Costa Rica and currently teaches middle and high school Spanish.

Jim Sarris has a B.A. in Education from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and an M.A. in TESOL/Bilingual Ed. from Southern Connecticut State University. A proficient teacher of Spanish at all levels, Sarris also published several books on enhancing memory skills and Spanish language learning.

Sandy Williamson has a B.A. and M.A.T. from Duke University and has traveled extensively throughout the Hispanic world. She has presented at several conferences and served as an AP reader in 1996. She currently teaches high school Spanish.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Review of 601 Spanish Verbs + a Giveaway


The Verb Guide

The Verb Guide section at the beginning of this book is pure gold. I ve had trouble with the more advanced tenses in Spanish until I read this section. The descriptions of each tense are the clearest and most easily understood of any Spanish book that I ve come across. I know some of you have heard Screw Grammar! from my friend Ramses, and to some extent I agree, but I think you still need to know when and how to use your verb tenses. You don t need to memorize the rules but you do need read about them, and more importantly study sentences in your SRS that demonstrate these rules. This book has enough example sentences for each of the verb tenses that you will learn how to use them well.


This book also does an excellent job of explaining many of the exceptions that you must deal with in Spanish, and identifies the patterns you will see with irregular verbs, as well as the cases where there is no pattern, like that fui/fuiste/fue/fuimos/fueron can be either ser or ir, which I did not know before. I can honestly say that my Spanish has improved a lot just because of this section of the book.

The 601 Verbs

The bulk of this book is the reference section for the 601 verbs. This section is neatly laid out, with one verb per page. The verb s infinitive form and meaning in English are at the top of the page with all the possible conjugations laid out in charts neatly over the rest of the page. The charts are very easy to read, with the suffix changes for each conjugation in bold. Some verbs in this section are highlighted as must know verbs.

Other sections

...There is a section on text message abbreviations in Spanish. This is an interesting section, and maybe useful to those of you who text message with Spanish speakers. I can t verify its utility though, as the only Spanish speaker that I send text messages to doesn t know any of these abbreviations, although to be fair, we are in Texas and not in a Spanish-speaking country.

The next little section is a test preparation guide, which are useful tips for students in academic settings, and they re applicable for tests in subjects other than Spanish as well. Following this is the answer key to the earlier activity section. After that is the last section, which lists over 2500 more verbs. This section is actually great because if you could not find your verb in the main reference section, you can find it here with a short English definition and a page number which refers to a verb in the main reference section that conjugates in the exact same way. They really could have named this book 3101+ Verbs because that s really what you get with this section.

...

The Verdict

Because I find that numeric ratings are pretty useless, I like to give a score of either buy, borrow, or avoid. I rate this book as buy for any student of the Spanish language.

The Pros:

*Description of verb tenses are clearest and easiest to understand of any Spanish book I ve read
*Covers typical verb stem-change patterns well
*Good example sentences demonstrating the various tenses
*The reference section is laid-out well
*Low price: the cover price is only $15.99
*You really get over 3101 verbs

The Cons:

*In the verb reference section there are no sentences for each of the verbs
*The CD-ROM is not very useful. --Babelhut.com

Product Details

• Paperback: 736 pages
• Publisher: Berlitz Publishing; Bilingual edition (June 15, 2009)
• Language: English, Spanish
• ISBN-10: 9812686436
• ISBN-13: 978-9812686435
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 5.9 x 1.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #401,749 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Lori Langer de Ramirez began her career as a teacher of Spanish, French and ESL. She holds a Master's Degree in Applied Linguistics and a Doctorate in Curriculum and Teaching from Teachers College, Columbia University. She is currently the Chairperson of the ESL and World Language Department for Herricks Public Schools in New York.

Lori is the author of Empower English Language Learners with Tools from the Web (Corwin), Take Action: Lesson Plans for the Multicultural Classroom and Voices of Diversity: Stories, Activities and Resources for the Multicultural Classroom (Pearson), as well as several Spanish-language books and texts (Cuéntame: Folklore y Fábulas, 601 Spanish Verbs, and Mi abuela ya no está). She has contributed to many textbooks and written numerous articles about second language pedagogy and methodology. Her interactive website (www.miscositas.com) offers teachers virtual picturebooks, videos, thematic units and other curricular materials for teaching Chinese, English, French, Indonesian, Italian, Spanish and Thai.

In the past decade, Lori has presented workshops, staff development trainings, and addresses at local, regional and national conferences and in schools throughout the United States (Connecticut, Illinois, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, Washington D.C.) and abroad (Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Germany, Spain and Thailand). A short list of presentation topics includes:

* Tell me a Story: Folktales for the Language Classroom
* Identity and Multiculturalism: Creating Diversity Awareness,
* Designing Inquiry Curriculum for the World Language Classroom
* From Sprouts to Blossoms: Growing a Chinese Program from the Ground Up
* ¡Música Maestro! - An Interdisciplinary Approach to World Music and Second Languages.
* The Language of Art: A New Paradigm for Teaching World Language and the Arts
* Best Practices in FLES - an Integration of Language, Culture and Content.
* Authentic Assessment and Portfolios for the Language Classroom.
* Raconte-moi l'Afrique - West African Folklore in the French Classroom.
* Virtual Picturebooks - Using Online Stories to Integrate Language, Culture and Content.
* Turning the Tables: Reconfiguring student/teacher roles through technology
* Sharing the Fun - Interdisciplinary Language Units for the Whole School.
* Long and Strong: Foreign Language Sequences - Why, What and How to do it

She is the recipient of the Nelson Brooks Award for Excellence in the Teaching of Culture, several National Endowment for the Humanities grants for study in Mexico, Colombia and Senegal, and a Fulbright Award to India and Nepal. Her areas of research and curriculum development are multicultural and diversity education, interdisciplinary and content-based language teaching, folktales and authentic materials in the language classroom, and technology in language teaching, with an emphasis on Web 2.0 tools.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great resource!, June 16, 2009

By 

Jedd M. Chesterson "Jeddson" (NY, NY) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: 601 Spanish Verbs (601 Verbs) (English and Spanish Edition) (Paperback)

excellent resource for people who are learning Spanish. Has descriptions of when to use each verb tense along with a translation. The book provides each of the 601 verbs in each of these forms to make sure that the language learner uses them correctly (in writing and speaking). As a Spanish teacher, i think that it is a straightfoward book that provides instant help for someone trying to improve their spanish skills.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great for Beginners (More Advanced Speakers, look elsewhere), February 14, 2011

By 

Asphyxia - See all my reviews

This review is from: 601 Spanish Verbs (601 Verbs) (English and Spanish Edition) (Paperback)

Now, don't be gettin' all hot and bothered about my title of this review. When I first bought this book, I was a junior in high school. HANDS-DOWN it was invaluable for me during that time. I decided I would minor in Spanish in college, and in my first year of intermediate Spanish, it worked well. As we began working with more complex verb tenses and usages (that subjunctive always gets ya, am I right?), this book was still working out well for me.

Well, as I've now progressed to the most advanced intermediate Spanish course I can take before moving on to the next level, this book has not been helpful. I almost always have to look up unfamiliar verbs in my other Spanish-English dictionaries.

I still reference to this book because of the beginning portion. The first part of the book dedicates several pages to each verb tense, explaining the tense, giving examples of it, giving examples of when you would use it vs using this other tense ("In this case, use the imperfect subjunctive vs present perfect" as an example), etcetera. What a miracle that section is. It'll even give you great tips and acronyms and little memory tricks! The book also has some practice sections. Nowadays, I often find that beginning section a bit lacking... I guess it's just because as I progress into more complex situations and contexts, I require more complex and in-depth explanations.

Point is, if you are a beginner to low-intermediate student, I highly recommend this book. Beyond that, you won't find anything you don't already know, and you'll very likely find yourself looking for more. If you're just a high schooler who's serious about Spanish or just need to get Spanish out of the for your 2 year, get this book. If you're beyond that, look elsewhere.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars CD IS ONLY FOR IPOD, June 15, 2011

By 

mattyd - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: 601 Spanish Verbs (601 Verbs) (English and Spanish Edition) (Paperback)

As a verb conjugation reference, this book is fine.

But, the potential buyer should know that the CD which comes with this book is only for IPOD. If you have windows or android or anything other than an IPOD, you should consider this as a book with no CD, then think about the price relative to other books which DO have a useful CD.

I was disappointed, perplexed and angry at what I perceived to be a profoundly stupid management and marketing decision on the part of Berlitz. ...Not to mention PISSED that I spent this much on what is basically a dead-tree-only product :(