Customer Reviews

English Grammar for Students of Spanish

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As an instructor of the Spanish language, I've found Emily Spinelli's book extremely useful. The constrastive analysis between Spanish and English exemplified in her book is clear and concise. The best thing about this book is that it not only helps you understand Spanish grammar, but also serves as a refresher for English grammar. English Grammar for Students of Spanish should be a required text on the syllabus of any instructor teaching elementary and intermediate level Spanish courses.

I haven't seen the inside of a classroom in almost 20 years. So, when I decided to learn Spanish, it became painfully obvious that I didn't remember enough English grammar to fully understand most explanations of Spanish grammar. I was going to look for an English grammar review book, but then I came across this.

Every chapter asks a "what is..." type of question. For example, "What is the conditional?" or "What is a relative pronoun?" For each question there are two answers: "In English..." and "In Spanish..." So, you get to see both explanations side by side.

Also, the book's website contains correlations for 22 Spanish textbooks. The correlation tells you exactly what you need to read in this book to explain the grammar presented in any given chapter of your textbook.

You can find the correlations here:
http://oliviahill.com/html/fcorlist.html

Anyone learning Spanish who isn't completely comfortable with English grammar should buy this book.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who is learning or teaching Spanish. As a tutor I refer to it constantly along with the 501 Spanish Verbs book. A really indispensable resourse! Using them together, it really makes it easier to learn to speak Spanish.

While this volume may be absolutely critical for teaching Spanish (there are also volumes for other languages), it has not been my experience that the average student finds it to be of much use, only because the "typical" student doesn't have the background in English grammar to effectively use this book. The book is excellent - without question. But to simply hand to it the student and expect instant results in the public school system in the United States is a bit of a stretch. You would do better to use the book yourself as the teacher. If you are the student, do not hesitate to buy and utilize this book - it is excellent, but you must STUDY this book.

This is an outstanding book. I highly recommend it for English-speakers trying to learn Spanish. For Spanish-speakers trying to learn English, there is also an inverted version of this book by the same publisher, "Gramatica Espanola Para Estudiantes De Ingles" by Ana Levenson.

"English Grammar for Students of Spanish" is a small, relatively inexpensive book that gets right to the point and clearly compares and contrasts English and Spanish grammars. The book utilizes the effective technique of using the familiar to explain the unfamiliar.

Despite doing well in most subjects in school and university, English grammar was always my worst subject. My understanding of English grammar never quite gelled. So, while attempting to learn Spanish, I have found my weak grasp of English grammar has been a significant obstacle to me obtaining fluency and competence in Spanish. This book has allowed me to substantially advance my fundamental grasp of both Spanish grammar and English grammar at the same time.

I wish my English grammar books back in school were this small, to the point, clear, and well-written. It's a must-read for grammar-challenged individuals serious about mastering Spanish.

I bought this book several years ago when it first came out and was pleased to see that to date it is still in print. It's definitely worth it. It uses English examples to explain thing to the reader which he/she must know imn order to understand the concept in Spanish Grammar. Hopefully I will buy the newest edition of this book once it's available here in Israel. Like wine it has probably improved with age.

I found this book to be excellent in serving it's purpose; namely to show how to use Spanish by contrasting Spanish grammar with English grammar. One excellent feature is that it explains the English grammar along side the Spanish grammar so that those of us who are weak in our English grammar can quickly come up to speed. This book is at the core of my library of books focused on learning Spanish. A must have.

This is a book to teach English grammar to English speakers. But why would you, an English-speaker learning Spanish, spend time studying English grammar? Because if you are like most of us, you don't really know the terminology of grammar (and let's be honest, you don't know all the concepts either, even if you speak perfectly proper English).

Books teaching a foreign language regularly refer to grammatical terms like indirect object, tense (e.g., the present , present perfect, present progressive tenses), mood, auxilliary verbs, participles, and the like. This book explains what those terms mean and illustrates them in both English and Spanish.

Take direct objects and indirect objects. In the sentence "John gave Mary the book," is Mary the direct object of the verb "gave"? Nope. The book is the object of the action (it is what is being given), and Mary is the indirect object. Another way of expressing this in English, which makes the grammatical concept here more clear, is to say "John gave the book to Mary." Both word orders are permissible in English, but according to the book, only subject-verb-direct object-indirect object word order is used in Spanish.

This book covers the basics of both English and Spanish grammars and thus shows how they are similar and how they differ. The book does not undertake to teach Spanish grammar in any detail, however. Consistent with its focus on teaching English grammar, it often refers the reader to his or her textbook for details on Spanish grammar.

If you are looking for a book that will help you understand basic grammatical terms and concepts of English and their correspondence to Spanish, this book will help you.

It is difficult to learn another language if you do not fully understand your own. This author explains subjuctive, past perfect and etc. in terms easy to understand. Thus, the author puts English and Spanish sentences side-by-side for easy comparison. I love it and wish I had this book when I was in school.

this book explains spanish grammar through association to english grammar. there are mini-quizes after each segment which are quite helpful. the text volume is not daunting, but very succinct. for learning things about number/gender/adjectives etc, this book is simply a gem. great for spanish class or as an aid to learning the language, but not a 'tourist book' with vital phrases.