Customer Reviews

Comic Mnemonics for Spanish Verbs

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3 star:		(1)
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Profusely illustrated by Jim Sarris with one hundred instances of cartoon style artwork, Comic Mnemonics: A Fun, Easy Way To Remember Spanish Verbs by Jim Sarris is a vocabulary building guide that uses simple, humorous line drawings and whimsical catch phrases to help students of Spanish memorize verbs, such as "viajar" to travel: "on Mars, they travel via jars". Conjugation and grammar reviews for each verb help reinforce memorization and understanding of these verbs, all of which are common-use words vital for anyone striving to gain a working command of the Spanish language. Highly recommended for self-study, student use, review, or just plain fun.

Great book for anyone having trouble remembering Spanish verbs and their forms. Along with the pictures and key words to help you remember, there are exercises with each word to test yourself. Plus, at the end of the book there are numerous explanations about conjugating the Spanish verbs.

I purchased this book to help me teach verbs to a Spanish I class. So far, they do recall many of the mnemonic phrases especially the rhyming ones (e.g. Boone leaves the saloon), although the book does not contain as many verbs as I would like, and does nothing to help remember stem-changing verbs (besides listing the conjugations below the cartoon).
Even so, it's a good study aid and we have been using it whenever new verbs come up that are included in this book.

i bought this for my Spanish classroom thinking that mnemonic devices are helpful and fun for my students but the book includes some tricks that are great while others are too much of a stretch to be helpful. in retrospect, an entire book of mnemonic devices didn't really meet the needs of my Spanish 1 students. my favorite feature is the model sentences (where students fill in the blanks) and the charts that display the verb conjugated in both the present tense and preterit tense.

This little book was a great reference for my introduction to Spanish class. It presents 100 of the most common Spanish verbs in an alphabetical format. Each verb has a comic strip/cartoon which will help you remember the meaning of the verb by using the methods of mnemonics and association with the equivalent word in English.

For example, the Spanish word "mirar" means "to look at," so the cartoon shows a person looking in a mirror with the caption: "Roger looks at the MIRROR." Another example is the word "cantar" which means "to sing." The cartoon shows a boy singing on a stage with those in the audience covering their ears. The caption is: "Bing CAN'T sing." Also "gastar" means "to spend." The comic shows a lady purchasing gas and the caption says: "Mama Cass spends too much on GAS," and so on and so forth for the other 97 verbs. While this method may seem silly to some people, it is also unforgettable and therefore an effective way to remember.

Another plus is that the verb conjugations in the present and preterite tenses are listed below the comic strips and a small exercise with it usage on the next page. Going by my niece's enthusiasm about this book, students taking middle/high school Spanish will love it too.

If you enjoy this method, you'll probably like "Spanish by Association" by Michael Gruneberg too. However, it doesn't have the cartoons like "Comic Mnemonics" but it includes nouns and adjectives as well as verbs.

I only had a small knowlage of Spanish but with this book, i leaned sooooooo much! I recommend it to anyone who wants to begin Spanish. You can;t expect to be fluint after reading this book but it is still a great help.

What a creative approach to learning Spanish verbs! Using pictures, rhymes or associations are proven methods for remembering information. Visual learners remember the picture, audio learners need to repeat the information aloud, and kinesthetic learners can be included because the verbs can be acted out. Plus, anything that is fun, is more easily stored in the brain. This is not just a book for children, adults can benefit too. The clever ideas and captivating pictures make learning fun and easy!

This is James from James Spanish (the learning Spanish blog).
One of the most challenging aspects of learning a language is trying to remember all of the words, phrases, verbs and conjugations needed to put a sentence together. You may spend hours studying the perfect tense of the verb "comprar" only to find yourself struggle to tell someone that you bought tomatoes from the market yesterday. This book deals with the problem of remembering and recalling verbs by using a variety of memory devices designed to help you quickly think of the words that you need.

The conjugation of each verb is accompanied by a colorful comic strip, giving you a visual aid for remembering the information, as well as a contextual situation in which it might be used. Many of the comic strips show people carry out the action implied by the verb, in a fun way that is easy to remember. Rhyming is also used in many examples, which is another powerful memory aid. In this way, several learning methods are used to absorb the information, helping you to retain it more thoroughly.

The book is ideal for beginners, or for students who are having trouble remembering particular verbs. The fun format also makes it ideal for children or teenagers, holding their interest for longer and making the learning process less boring and tedious.

There are also basic exercises covering each verb, which let you test your knowledge and understanding and measure how well the information is sinking in. This practical element is a nice addition, and makes the book a more complete study aid. While by no means comprehensive, Comic Mnemonics for Spanish Verbs is an excellent supplemental material for any learner who wants to keep their study interesting and fun, and the memory aids really do help you to remember key verbs.

As a reference or study tool, the layout of keeping the present and past tense of each verb on the same page allows you to quickly locate the conjugation you need. There is also a section which reviews correct grammar for the past and present tense, giving you a more in depth understanding of these tenses.

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. According to him, in academic circles in Spain as well as Latin America this Spanish dictionary is the standard.

This book is a must for anyone learning Spanish who has problems remembering verbs tense.

I just started to learn Spanish and I had never taken any languages in school. It helped me a lot. The pictures and "mnemonics" are great.