Customer Reviews

The Big Red Book of Spanish Verbs with CD-ROM, Second Edition

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Like several similar titles, this book has conjugation patterns for every regular and irregular verb. What sets it apart is the terrific CD-ROM which comes with it. The CD-ROM contains hundreds of exercises which you do on the PC--many of which are for listening comprehension. There are also sound files for phrases using the "Top 50" verbs which can be downloaded to make your own audio CD as well as put on a MP3 player. All of the phrases are marked on the page for the particular verb.
There is an amazing amount of material in the book/CD-ROM combo--as much as in many programs which are far more expensive and far less convenient to use. It is the best verb book out there for that reason.

This is James from James Spanish (the learning Spanish blog).It's all very well knowing that `ser' means `to be' or that `tengo' means `I have', but in order to be able to speak more fluently and understand conversations you will have to master verbs a bit more fully. The problem is that sometimes the vast amount of variations between past, present and future tenses can seem overwhelming. Not to mention irregular verbs, and how each conjugation changes depending on the subject of the sentence. There is a lot to learn.

The Big Red Book of Spanish Verbs is practically the reference bible of Spanish verbs, with plenty of lists, information and tips to help you understand and remember the thousands of verb conjugations.

Each verb is listed in all tenses and there are plenty of examples included with each verb to help you get an idea of how the conjugations can be used in context. Many of these examples are colloquial, giving you a taste of how the verb is used in the real world. These idiomatic phrases are great snippets of vocabulary that will help to make you sound more fluent!

The section of the Top 50 Spanish Verbs is extremely useful, and a great starting place when trying to memorize verb conjugations. These verbs are also included in the main section of the book, with a note telling you that they are also in the Top 50.

Having confidence in your knowledge of the most common verbs is key to being more comfortable and natural when speaking, and will be crucial to your understanding spoken Spanish.

After the 50 most common Spanish verbs, the verbs are organized in alphabetical order so that they are easy to find. The overall layout of the information on each page is clear and easy to read so you never feel that you are searching for a needle in a haystack.

For each verb, the most common conjugations are listed at the top of the page, so you can find this information super fast.

A reference book like this can do wonders for your Spanish, helping you to learn to conjugate verbs confidently and quickly. Whether you are a beginner needing to study up on the basics of Spanish verbs, or an advanced speaker looking for a comprehensive reference manual, this is a great value book that will serve you well at all levels.


In closing my review of this product, I'd like to share with you the three Amazon products that I have found most helpful in my pursuit to learn Spanish. If you are truly serious about achieving fluency, I'd recommend getting all 3 of them if you can afford it.

1. Lights, Camera, Spanish (Book + DVD): Learn Conversational Spanish by Watching a Romantic Adventure This is actually a 90 minute movie for Spanish-language learners. It gives the option to watch the movie with subtitles but I'd recommend not using them to improve your Spanish. This "movie" also includes a workbook so that you can reinforce the Spanish vocabulary words and phrases from the film. The workbook also has lots of exercises to keep you engaged in the film. But be prepared to hear Chilean accents. Although pleasent to the ear, the accents from Chile are very different from most Latin American accents.

2. Verbarrator Version 1.1 (Windows Version) This software replaces the traditional verb conjugation books and makes learning how to conjugate Spanish verbs an interactive and fun activity. This should be a required resource for anyone who wants to improve their ability to conjugate Spanish verbs. Especially anyone who is challenged by the drudgery of learning how to conjugate Spanish verbs and who is looking for a new way to make learning how to conjugate Spanish verbs an easy and fun activity

3. Diccionario esencial de la lengua espanola de la Real Academia Espanola (Spanish Edition) If you are really serious about speaking the language fluently, then at some point you will need to replace your Spanish-English dictionary and get a pure Spanish dictionary with both the vocabulary words and the definitions entirely in Spanish. I use this one only because it was highly-recommended by a friend from Spain who teaches Spanish.

To tell you a little about my background, I am the editor of the Learning Spanish Products Reviews newsletter.I am also a native Spanish speaker and a Spanish instructor. In addition, I am the author of two learning-Spanish products offered at Amazon.com (USA):

1. Anna Rivera's 1000 Plus Most Powerful Spanish Words (English and Spanish Edition)
2.Anna Rivera's 800 Plus Most Powerful Spanish Phrases (English and Spanish Edition)

This is an excellent book for conjugating verbs. It is more of a reference book than a how-to-book. It is certainly not the type of book that was intended to be read from cover to cover. In any event, you will find that this book is a very useful resource for learning Spanish. In fact, I will say that a Spanish verb conjugation book or software is a required resource for mastering Spanish.

This book is truly a value because it actually contains more than 555 verbs. In total, there are over 2,300 verb in this book but many of them are only cross-referenced to conjugation models. One of the things that I like about this book is that it contains a list of "Top 50 Verbs" so if you want to accelerate your learning you can go straight to the section on the "Top 50 Verbs" and become acquainted with the verbs featured in this section. What would I improve about this book? Well, this book does have exercises but only a few pages of exercises. I'd like to see more exercises in this book to help reinforce what the student is learning.

Received The Big Red bood of Spanish Verbs several days before it was promised. It is in perfect new condition and has been a big help to this 75 year old Spanish student. I have been using a different verb book but this is much easier to look up. It has examples of usage as well as all the verb forms. I highly recommend it.

The book has the goods as far a the conjugation of all the verbs. It does that very well and that alone is worth more than the price of the book. Add ons are examples of usage at the bottom of the page - neat. 50 of the highly used verbs also have a full page each written about them. Also a grammar section which is a bit of a tease, I would have liked a little bit more of an explanation of the tenses and moods. The short explanations are good and well written, but considering the size of the book, they could have been a bit more involved. Still this section is over 40 pages - there is just a lot ground to cover, I guess.

The cd is alright. Much of it is multiple choice, where I would have preferred ¨fill in the blank¨/flashcard sort of format. I scored about %70 on the diagnostic test by by just finding the person and number of the subject and matching it to the verb ending - although I had no idea what most of the verbs meant, or even what tense or mood I was working with. Even though, I plan to work though the exercise to get a better understanding of the verb endings. The module that challenges you to pick out the difference in the two easily confused verb forms looks sweet.

Early into my Spanish lessons I found the verbs so tricky. Sure, I was able to get the concepts, but I really needed someone to spell it out for me, providing all the tenses of each verb at a simple viewing. In addition, each verb comes with examples to get a sense of how the verb is used. This, along with my Collins Concise Spanish dictionary, are the two most thumbed Spanish books I have. The accompanying CD is a great teaching tool as well. Of course, listening to podcasts such as News in Slow Spanish is also a wonderful way to hear verbs in use.

This is a very useful book. The first few pages are devoted to educating the reader about the various tenses. The verbs then follow, in alphabetical order.

What's great about this book is that it doesn't just include the various ways of conjugating verbs. I have flashcards that do that just fine. Rather, additional information is included about many of the verbs.

As an example, take the verb, acabar. One page in the book includes all the ways to conjugate the verb; acabo, acabare', acabe, acabando, etc. One other full page focuses on different ways, other uses, and related words:

* acabar + infinitive = to have just done something
* acabar por + infinitive = finally, in the end
* acabar con = to finish with

I find this very helpful, as many Spanish verbs [e.g., dejar, dicir, andar, ir, hablar] can be used in a variety of ways. If all you know is how to conjugate them, you miss these subtleties.

Even with the number of verbs included in this book, I know the basic meaning of most of them. This book helped expand my understanding of many of them.

Finally, with every verb, there are multiple examples provided.

Definitely a book to include in your arsenal of Spanish resources, especially if you're at the beginner- to intermediate level.

I am a beginner with spanish and this book does a great job introducing the concepts. I am already able to communicate significantly better in spanish than I ever was before.

I prefer the big red book of Spanish verbs (555) to the 501 Spanish verbs with cd-rom by Ch.Kendris.
A splendid book.

R.Smid

This book is an excellent alternative to 501 Spanish verbs. I found it very helpful how this book shows you how the verbs are used as idioms and expressions. Many books will teach you how to conjugate Spanish verbs but very few actually show you how native Spanish speakers use them as expressions.

I also felt that the author did a great job at providing a summary of how to form the tenses. So instead of this book just being a reference book that lists hundreds of verbs and their conjugations, this book actually shows you in detail how to conjugate the various Spanish verb tenses including the present tense, the imperfect tense, the preterit tense, the future tense, the conditional tense and every tense that you would need to speak Spanish fluently with. There are also exercises in this book to help you get a better grasp of conjugating Spanish verbs. But there are only a few pages of these exercises. I wish there were more.

Although I own this book as well as 501 Spanish Verbs, you really don't need to own both unless you are a collector of learning Spanish products like I am.