Customer Reviews

Practice Makes Perfect: Spanish Past-Tense Verbs Up Close (Practice Makes Perfect Series)

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Thank Heaven for this little book! I met the author on my bus ride home one day earlier this year. He noticed me plodding through my huge Spanish practice book and correctly noted that I was trying to learn. I now have a copy of this book, and in the first few pages, it cleared up something that I've been trying to figure out since I started studying Spanish in the late 80s--when to use the preterite versus the imperfect! That issue has literally been driving me crazy.

The author gets right to the point and gives you simple, easy-to-remember explanations of how to use the preterite and the imperfect tenses. Within 5 minutes, I felt I had the confidence to finally figure it out. The exercises help you seal in that knowledge and practice, practice, practice!

This book is highly recommended -- get it and learn how to speak the past-tense properly. You won't regret it!

I got this book at a very good time since I'm about to teach my Spanish class the difference between the imperfect and the preterit. I will probably use some of the exercises in this book to help my students understand the past tenses.

Table of Contents

1. The Imperfect: Description and Background
2. The Preterit: Narration, or what happened?
3. The imperfect and the preterit together: Narrating and describing the past
4. The present perfect: What have you done for me lately?
5. The pluperfect: What happened before something else
6. The conditional: What would be and the future of the past
7. The conditional perfect: What would have been
8. The sequence of tenses: Observations on the indicative and the subjunctive

The section on the present perfect is very interesting. The author has noticed that students have been using the English present perfect less and less recently. I have noticed that several of my Spanish-speaking friends use the Spanish present perfect less than I had learned.

Brandon Simpson

What a fantastic, easy review of past tense verbs. It wasn't at all confusing this time. (I've said it before and I'll say it again, some of the Practice Makes Perfect books need to be used in high school foreign language classes.) I had a blast revewing my past tense verbs. I liked that there was Spanish-to-English translation and vice versa. Also nice were the activities where you had to explain why you used a specific tense. The last chapter reviewed tense ordered and had 50 fill-in-the-blank exercises of verb conjugation. The key for this exercise was especially helpful, b/c it told you why you had to use the specific tense.

I enjoyed this book so much that I pulled out my 501 Spanish Verbs to continue reviewing the tenses. I'm not intimidated anymore! :D

Highly recommended!

This book is full of information but it is presented in a form that has no "teaching ablility" for the average student. Yes, all the information is there, but unless you are an advance student of spanish or at the end point of your quest to learn spanish and NEED A REVIEW, seek help elsewhere. The other "Practice Makes Perfect" series books I own are extremly well done, which focus on: Verb tenses, Vocabulary, Pronouns, Complete Grammer, etc., but this one, "Spanish Past-Tense Verbs" is the absolute pits in teaching format for the average beginner/intermediate student. It has no expanded information on the lessons presented, but assumes you already know it all and need a refresher or expanded explination of the subject, definitely not for the novice or intermediate learner!

Continuing Guitar Player
H.C.

excellent!! better than my textbook. reinforces the shorter exercises from my textbok. All of Eric Vogt's books are great.

Recieved this book very quickly from the vendor, will be a great tool for spanish class. Look forward to doing more buisness with this vendor

I am taking advanced Spanish and needed to review how and when to use past tense.
This is my second Practice Makes Perfect book. I find it to be very helpful because it breaks the material down with clear explanations. There is a lot of practice to reinforce what is taught. It explains the imperfect and the preterite and how to use them when writing a story. Additionally present perfect, pluperfect, conditional, conditional perfect,are discussed. These series are great for reinforcement and I highly recommend them.

I loved this book! It helped so much in the learning and understanding of the two Spanish past tenses. I would recommend this to anyone seriously involved in the study of the Spanish language.

This is James from James Spanish (the learning Spanish blog). This book does an excellent job of teaching past tenses such as the preterite and imperfect. And if you have ever been confused about which one should you use in Spanish, the preterite or the imperfect, this book will definitely be of much help to you. My favorite section of this book is probably the section called "The present perfect: What have you done for me lately?"

In my study of the Spanish language, I have found that the present perfect is very important to know. Although Spanish speakers from the Caribbean often use the preterite tense instead of the present perfect (in the same way that we as Americans choose to use the preterite tense instead of the present perfect tense or at least in common everyday spoken English) my friends from South America usually choose to use the present perfect instead of the preterite. So that's why this book has been of so much help to me.

This book also did an excellent job covering the topic of the conditional and the conditional perfect. And I found the numerous verb tense exercises fun and engaging.