Customer Reviews

En Breve: A Concise Review of Spanish Grammar (Spanish Edition)

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This book is the best book I have found to help you review and expand your knowledge of Spanish. It is meant for someone who already has a basic command of the language. There are short, easy lessons in practical grammar and vocabulary that are combined with exposure to Spanish literature. The lessons are followed by brief quizzes with the answers provided in the back of the book.

I began to learn Spanish 11 years ago as a 9-year-old when I moved to Madrid with my family. We stayed there for two years and then moved to Asuncion, Paraguay for another two years. So that was a good 4 solid years of classes and daily exposure to the language. Since returning to the U.S., my Spanish stopped improving despite taking high school Spanish courses each year. Then I came to college, and for 3 semesters I took no Spanish. But last semester I took a course on grammar and composition, and the first part of the course was just going through En Breve.

I loved it. So many little questions and doubts that had been building up in my mind concerning Spanish grammar and idiomatic constructions were answered. If you thoroughly read this book, your control of the Spanish language will dramatically increase.

I recommend this to anyone who knows a decent amount of Spanish but who isn't very confident in their grammar. Don't misunderstand me, my grammar wasn't bad; in fact it was better than most of my peers since I had the advantage of four years of exposure to native speakers. But I knew that there were tons of things that I didn't know how to express clearly, which I now know how to express.

Some of the most useful things I learned in this book were how to correctly express ideas such as...
"Strong as they may be, they never win."
"The more you buy, the more popular you are."
"She bought more books than she can read."

As simple as those ideas are, relatively few non-native speakers of Spanish seem to know how to express them correctly. The book of course also contains the more obviously necessary discussions on direct and indirect object pronouns; the tenses and their uses; the subjunctive mood and its uses; what prepositions are necessary after what verbs under what conditions; et cetera. This book is incredibly useful and surprisingly comprehensive.

I only wish this were a series so that there were parallel versions for French, German and Russian, for example.

I'd just like to advise that it is not worth the amazon price of $93.95 to have it new, as it is just a medium-sized paperback book. Just buy it used for a third of the price.

Product came on time, but had to send it back because it was the wrong edition (my mistake), i emailed them and got a quick response on how to return the item