Essential Spanish Grammar: All The Grammar Really Needed For Speech And Comprehension (Dover Language Guides Essential Grammar)

I must say this book is doing a pretty good job explaining basic rules to a beginner. It could be considered a quick reference. I even created a condensed cheat sheet from it, to make it easier to memorize. The author doesn't explain why certain constructs are what they are, which may make them hard to understand for a native English speaker. I am a native Russian and we have a lot of very similar constructs so if i just remind myself that, it makes a lot more sense. Indoeuropean roots i guess. As far as "tu" conjugations, they are indeed missing. Actually, they mostly look like plural of "usted" conjugations, which is the opposite of russian - in russian, formal "you" is plural. Just get another book for that and other details.

this is the way to learn spanish. I have done Pimsler and Rosetta stone and although you learn words and phrases much much quicker with those methods, you'll learn the language better and with a much more thouroughly by using this graded reader method adn using this book to augment that learning. It focuses on understanding vs speaking. Think of a baby he/she hears thousands of words before they ever speak, when they do it is not a matter of knowing the word for them it is still how to make the sounds but the knolwedge is now there. I think althiough this method is slower at first to learn to speak after a few months the rate of learning greatly increase and the speed of the learning triples each lesson so that ultimatly after 6 months comapring allthree methods I will know more words and understand how to have an actual conversation much much better than a memorazation leaning based cirriculam could offer. try it have patients and you'll find this is the best path to long termmemory and command fo the spanish language

I do like this book. It's concise and helpful. I'm enjoying it. However my only complaint is there is no "tu" form for the verb conjugations. I mostly use the "tu" form. Maybe they use Usted more in Spain? But I'm going to write the "tu" form into the book to practice, but it's annoying to have to do that. For the price it's a good book though.

Very good learning tool

I used this book 40 years ago in college, and I still have it. I'm now re-learning Spanish along with my wife, so I bought a copy for her. It is a remarkably concise summary of Spanish grammar essentials, teaching just enough practical grammar for the reader to be able to converse. The explanation and examples are good. Brevity and clarity are the book's main strengths. The author made good decisions about what to cover and what not to cover. The actual Spanish grammar portion of the book is only about 60 pages. Most of the rest of the book is in two appendices: a 32-page list of cognates and a ten-page glossary of grammatical terms. I think these were added mostly to make the book long enough to sell. But I don't hold that against the author/publisher, because the core 60 pages are excellent.

This book is a pretty good review of the essentials of Spanish grammar, valuable as a quick review. However, it's showing its age (first copyright 1959). The informal tú and vosotros second person forms are largely ignored, in verb conjugation and in pronouns, on the claim that these forms are not used except between family and close friends. Definitely not true today, especially in Latin America. Lots of stuff about the subjunctive, which again is less used than in the past. The list of cognates is useful. On the whole, though, the book is badly in need of updating to describe contemporary Spanish.

Great book with lots of information . Easy to read and follow along with the ideas given to improve your Spanish

This is the best grammar book for a beginner, and I have read several. It is concise, it is clear, and it focuses on the most important topics. Please understand there is no single perfect way to learn a language. You need multiple resources, including phrase books (Rick Steves), grammar books (this one), vocabularies, and preferably interactive software (Anki flashcards and Duolingo). With this book and the other resources, in a few months I have become sufficiently fluent to be a good tourist in Spain, which was my goal.

I bought it for a friend so that he could improve his Spanish, I have looked at the book several times when visiting and found the contents very informative.

just okay nothing special.