Complete Idiot's Guide to Intermediate Spanish [Paperback]

Steven Hawson (Author), Steven R. Hawson (Author)

Book Description

Series: The Complete Idiot's Guide | Publication Date: June 22, 2000

Spanish has become the most popular foreign language in American schools and businesses. The "Complete Idiot's Guide to Intermediate Spanish" offers expanded coverage of grammar and vocabulary, as well as idiomatic usage, irregular verbs and conversational elements. No other book offers intermediate Spanish in this easy-to-understand format.

Editorial Reviews

Language Notes

Text: English, Spanish

From the Back Cover

Spanish has become the most popular foreign language in American schools and businesses. The "Complete Idiot's Guide to Intermediate Spanish" offers expanded coverage of grammar and vocabulary, as well as idiomatic usage, irregular verbs and conversational elements. No other book offers intermediate Spanish in this easy-to-understand format.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 400 pages
• Publisher: Alpha; 1 edition (June 22, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0028639243
• ISBN-13: 978-0028639246
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.4 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,056,008 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excelente! I love this wonderful book., July 6, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Complete Idiot's Guide to Intermediate Spanish (Paperback)

This is THE best book about Spanish that I have ever read. I had already studied basic Spanish, but was pretty rusty. I couldn't put the book down! The author, Steven R. Hawson, has explained things in the clearest way that I have ever read. And, the book is also humorous. I highly recommend it to eveyone. I've never learned more Spanish. I also am learing a lot on my second reading. A great buy!

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Informative and Accessible, October 19, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Complete Idiot's Guide to Intermediate Spanish (Paperback)

Here is a Spanish book that will actually teach you Spanish, real Spanish as it is spoken and written throughout Latin America and Spain. With humor and insight the book guides yuo through many of the knotty aspects of Spanish grammar and usage, all the while letting you test and grow your skills. The author makes excellent recommendations for other materials you can use once you finish this book (or at the same time), and offers plenty of useful tidbits about Latino culture, history, and society. An excellent way to improve your Spanish, and a useful review if you already know a lot.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars It is WELL worth the money., January 22, 2006

By 

Dr. Leslie Brown "Doc Brown" (Tenerife, Spain, Canary Islands.) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Complete Idiot's Guide to Intermediate Spanish (Paperback)

I have never thought of myself as stupid enough to buy a "Complete Idiot's Guide" before, but I am SO glad I bought this. This book assumes some prior knowledge of Spanish, because it is an intermediate level... but with this one resource I have learned a lot of useful things, more than *ANY* other book or program.

I have bought about 10 spanish books, and this is by far the best one, and the most easy to use & follow. A note about the way it is written: each chapter uses a passage written in spanish (a few paragraphs), and they each progressively introduce more spanish. The text is disected, in the pages that follow. I think this is an EXCELLENT way to introduce you to more complex spanish, by providing you with short, interesting facts about the Geography & Culture of spanish speaking countries. Compared to my other 10 books, this one is unique in that respect.

I like the way that grammatical terms were explained... the tenses such as indicative, preterite, conditional, subjunctive, etc... and certain types of words such as demonstratives, pronouns, adverbs, superlatives, etc. *Finally* someone explained it well assuming no prior knowledge of all these abstract language terms. OK I already knew what a verbs, adjectives and nouns were. THANKYOU SO MUCH STEVEN HAWSON!! This was taught very poorly during my schools days.... and you have helped me to learn English better as well!! The rest of you: PLEASE don't be put off by this section of my review.

As well as this, there are also MANY other shortcuts & other useful information. Such as the use of "ser vs estar", "preterite vs imperfect" (I particularly like the way these two were explained) and "por vs para" --- although I think that "por vs para" could have been explained a slightly better - because I already seemed to work it out the rules for myself with the help of spanish natives. Everything else was explained **exceptionally** well.

This is quite a big book, and as I have said, it contains a lot of helpful information; however the chapters are short & it is easy to read & progress through. Learning a language is not an easy task... this book comes the closest to explaining things in an easy-to-understand manner. It is funny too - that alone makes you want to keep reading.

I think of language learning as fitting all the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle together; no two people would fit those pieces together in exactly the same sequence, and everyone proceeds at different rates (and some people may never even finish the entire puzzle), but eventually -given enough time & patience- another person can recognise the picture even though there may still be some gaps. You can think of "effective communication" as being able to "recognise the picture in the puzzle" in my metaphor. Well, this one single book has allowed me to fill in the most number of puzzle pieces.

Put another way: I have five highlighters: pink, orange, yellow, green and blue. I reckon by the time I get to the end, the fluoro ink in every one of them will be at least partially dry.
Yes I am only half-way through, but if someone steals the rest of my book, I still think that the first half is worth every single cent.