Customer Reviews

Practice Makes Perfect: The Spanish Subjunctive Up Close (Practice Makes Perfect Series)

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

I've always thought that the Spanish subjunctive was so complicated that it could be covered in a book by itself. I've always hoped for such a book, too. Following is its table of contents:

1. When to use the subjunctive and how to form its four tenses
2. Sequence of tenses and the subjunctive
3. Subordinated noun clauses
4. Subordinated adjective clauses
5. Adverbial expressions
6. Contrary-to-fact statements
7. Comprehensive exercises

The author states early in the book that many Spanish students assume that the subjunctive is all about doubt. The author is quick to explain that this assumption is problematic. The use of the subjunctive in doubt or uncertainty is only ONE of its many uses. I'm glad there's a book on the subjunctive that addresses this issue. I used to tutor a student in Spanish who thought the subjunctive was all about doubt. And trying to get her to understand that there was more to the subjunctive than just doubt was a difficult task.

The book explains how to conjugate all four tenses in the subjunctive, then it moves on to its uses. This book explains the uses of the subjunctive in the same order as many other books. First, it explains its uses in nominal clauses, then it moves on to adjective clauses, adverbial clauses, and contrary-to-fact statements. The end of the book has exercises.

I think this book is incredible, but I personally don't think it's a good idea to explain all four tenses at once. I think it's better to start out with the present subjunctive, learn how to use it, and then move on to the other tenses. The author mentions the future subjunctive and the future perfect subjunctive, but he doesn't explain how to use them. I wish he had; it's difficult to find reference materials that explain the future subjunctive.

I highly recommend this book. 5 stars!!!

Brandon Simpson

This is a very impressive little book. There are two main reasons it works nicely for me:

* This author knows his stuff and has a knack for explaining the material logically, to the point, and without unnecessary extra baggage. The concepts are conveyed VERY well--probably better than any language instruction author I've read.

* A rather uncommon approach is taken (which should be mimicked by other authors!): he does not separate the four common tenses of the subjunctive mood. The need for the subjunctive is explained as a whole, and then the four tenses' usage is put into an almost mathematical "if ... then ..." clause format. It's all presented as a unified concept and the reader is given lots of practice with intermingled usage requirements: subjunctive/indicative, past/present, four subjunctive tenses.

This approach is very effective pedagogically, at least for me, and has really helped me to clear up and REMEMBER the subjunctive mood in general. Other books give you the four tenses of the subjunctive mood one at a time. There is no cohesion or review. Once you go through say the imperfect subjunctive, you never see it again and it's gone from your mind in a week. In this book, it's all presented and drilled together. This is great practice in sorting out the various subjunctive tenses/usage and also in knowing when the subjunctive should NOT be used.

So, yeah, buy it!

This refers only to the Kindle edition. I love the text of the book. However, the heart of the book are the exercises. Regrettably, the exercises are in miniscule type that cannot be enlarged. You'll need a large reading magnifying glass to view this book on Kindle. This problem with Kindle is not unique to this book, unfortunately. Maybe Amazon should provide Kindle buyers with magnifying glasses??? Buyer beware!!

I have been studying Spanish for years, and unfortunately I was never really taught the subjunctive. As a result, I've been struggling for years to understand it. Actually, that's not true: I've been avoiding it completely!

I am so happy that I found this little book. To start with, the author doesn't overwhelm you with material. He only includes easy-to-understand, concise explanations THAT MAKE SENSE! As with his other 2 books, he includes explanations in the Answer Key so if you missed a question, you know why. I don't know of any other author who does this. I have finally put my fears behind me and am learning the subjunctive.

I wonder if the author is planning on doing other "up close" books? I hope so! Until then, you must have this book (and his others). You can't go wrong.

i'm a college professor of music who has been studying spanish for the past two years. i've been engaged in a battle with the subjunctive, and to help me win, i have collected over fifty spanish grammar books. not one writer has been able to clearly distill, explain and teach the hows, whens and why's of proper usage. Until Dr. Vogt's book arrived...by the time i finished the preface, i knew that this man had it down! he was speaking directly to me and in less than a week, my progress has been remarkable. Don't wait another minute....if you need clarity and understanding of this somewhat elusive subject....buy the book!

This is a very good book on the Spanish subjunctive. However, do not order the Kindle version. The author gives numerous Spanish examples of the usage of the subjunctive and then discusses them in length. However, on the Kindle the examples are shown in a microscopic font that doesn't change when you change the Kindle font. I found it impossible to read the examples and therefore impossible to understand on the Kindle. I returned the Kindle version and ordered the paperback. I would give it a 5 stars except for the Kindle issue.

Length:: 2:21 Mins

I'm Natalia Velez. Your Spanish instructor from eLearnSpanishOnline.

The Spanish Subjunctive Up Close covers one of the most difficult topics of grammar for English speaking students learning the Spanish language. As any student of Spanish already knows, in order to speak proper Spanish you must learn and master the subjunctive mood and its four tenses:

The Present Subjunctive
The Imperfect Subjunctive
The Present Perfect Subjunctive
The Pluperfect Subjunctive

This book contains lots of exercises and answers to help the student learn the Spanish subjunctive. One of the things that I really like about this book is that many of the answers have detailed explanations.

Some of things that you will learn from this book are when to use the subjunctive and when NOT to use the subjunctive with adverbial expressions such as:

A pesar de que (despite, in spite of)
acaso, tal vez, quizá (perhaps)
así que, así como (such that)
aunque (although)
cuando (when)
de modo que, de manera que (in such a way that)
después de que, luego que (after)
hasta que (until)
mientras (while)
por más que, por mucho que (no matter how much)
siempre que (as long as)
tan pronto como, en cuanto (as soon as)
una vez que (once you have)

This book also does an excellent job of explaining to the student when to use the subjunctive in hypothetical situations, also known as contrary-to-fact sentences.

Although the author says that this book was specifically written for intermediate and advanced students of the Spanish language, anyone who is studying Spanish and has already learned the present indicative and preterit tenses can benefit from this book. This book can be successfully used by students who are learning the language on their own. And students who are learning the language with a Spanish instructor can also benefit immensely from this book.

The subjunctive tense has largely disappeared from common use in the English language, however it remains an important element in Spanish for those students wishing to achieve higher levels of fluency. It is one of the areas that causes the most problems for Spanish learners and can be frustrating to master. Practice Makes Perfect: The Spanish Subjunctive Up Close tackles this problem head on, providing a study tool dedicated to this tricky grammatical element.

The lessons are comprehensive, covering all four of the subjunctive tenses as well as Spanish pronouns to help improve your fluency. Rather than relying on the simple yet misleading general rules used by many teachers to try and explain the subjunctive the book addresses individual examples of usage and clearly explains why and how it was used, giving a clearer insight. The author also tackles common grey areas, offering advice and explanations to illuminate the correct choices and provide a solid framework of knowledge which can be applied to sentence construction for intermediate to advanced learners.

Despite the somewhat complicated topic, the book manages to cover all elements clearly without ever becoming overwhelming or too confusing. This is largely due to the simple layout and format of tackling one example at a time and providing easy to understand explanations in a logical way that clarifies rather than confuses. The author steers away from generalizing the subjunctive, but rather gets into the nitty gritty of it's different uses, giving a full and complete picture of how, when and why the tense should be used.

As the title implies, the key learning strategy employed in the book is practice. There are plenty of exercises for you to work on, and examples to study repeatedly in order to get a firm grasp on the subject matter. Even better, the answer key provides not just the correct answers for each exercise but explanations as to why this is correct. This is an invaluable tool for helping you to see where you have gone wrong and revising the area that you had trouble with.

If you are struggling with the subjunctive and want to beat this learning block once a for all, this is a great book to help you.

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 pleasant 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 mainly because it was highly-recommended by a friend from Spain who teaches Spanish. According to him, this is the "standard" among university level Spanish professors.

I read the other one-star reviews for the Kindle version of this book, but I figured, how bad could it be? I mean really, how small could the print possibly be?

Well, I should have listened to the other reviews. The "print" for the exercises is minisucule and cannot be changed: no matter how large you make the font for the "instructional theory" part of the book, the excercises remain the same tiny size. And when I say tiny, I mean it. No joke people, you will not be able to read them.

As for the other content in the book, I don't know. I would be it's probably very good, even great. But books like this--i.e. workbooks--depend on the quality of the excercises, and thus the Kindle version of this book is worthless.

This book was a good start at teaching myself the subjunctive. I agree with a previous review that praises the fact that the author did not split up the tenses of the subjunctive, but presented in the different chapters the reasons for using the subjunctive.

The problem is that I found some of the examples given within the chapters to be a bit confusing, and had to ask Spanish-speaking friends and online at a Spanish language-learning discussion forum for help. And in the chapter on the use of the subjunctive in adjective phrases, I did not find nearly enough examples of the use of the subjunctive, nor on the comparison of the use of the subjunctive vs. the indicative. The majority of the text of that chapter was devoted to comparing adjective clauses to noun clauses. When I reached the exercise portion of that chapter, I didn't feel I had enough understanding to go on. After completing that particular chapter, I found myself searching the web for more in-depth instructional content.

Finally, in many of the exercises, I found that you didn't really need to understand the content of the chapter to "get" the correct answers. For example, in the multiple choice exercises, given 4 choices, often three would be indicative and one subjunctive, making the correct answer obvious. Or there would be 3 choices in the present and one in the past tense, again, making the correct answer obvious. For many of the multiple choice, I didn't even need to read/understand the sentences to get the right answers. And in the matching exercises, if you looked for key words instead of the true meanings/use of the verbs, you could easily find the correct answers. I did not find that helpful in testing my understanding of the use of the subjunctive.

Bottom line, although this book has gotten me started just a little bit in my understanding of the subjunctive, I need much, much more in order to feel confident in actually using it.