Dorothy Richmond - Practice Makes Perfect: Spanish Vocabulary

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Language, like all forms of art and beauty, is about making connections and enhancing life.

Any human action, from writing a novel to taking a walk, can be raised to the level of art. It can also be reduced to mechanics: functional, but lifeless. As you study Spanish, you can choose to approach it as an art form or as a practical tool for communicating with others, or anything in between. The language itself and its various opportunities do not changethey are there for the taking. What you come away with is based on your choice of orientation. Both approachesartistic and utilitarianrequire diligence and hard work, with attention paid to both grammar and vocabulary.

A lopsided approach, however, can greatly diminish your enjoyment and success.

Think of learning a language the way a fine house is built. First comes the foundation. The structure must be solid, well thought out, of quality material and craftsmanship. Measurements must be exact, lines straight, surfaces level. Laying a foundation is serious business, and structure, rules, and formulae tried and truenot originalityreign.

In language, this foundation is called grammar, a feature as necessary as architectural footings, even though it has been unconscionably discounted in recent years. Imagine what a building would look like if its foundation were not solid. This is exactly what happens to language when the grammatical structure is shaky: It crumbles. Where the careless builder now has a pile of rubble, the inattentive student of language is surrounded by a mountain of words, each potentially useful, some even complex and beautiful, but rendered useless in the absence of structure. Thus it is that this booka text designed to build your vocabularybegins not with a flurry of words, but with a solid introduction to Spanish grammar.

Practice Makes Perfect: Spanish Vocabulary offers you the maximum amount of vocabulary with the minimum amount of grammar needed to give the words life. Practice Makes Perfect: Spanish Vocabulary offers you the maximum amount of vocabulary with the minimum amount of grammar needed to give the words life.

The nitty-gritty technical and grammatical aspects of the languagewhich are endless and will be debated long after were all goneare not included. Instead, you are given all the tools any student needs to speak, hear, understand, and create Spanish at a conversational level. This book is a marvelous companion to every classroom text on the market. The book is presented entirely in the present tense, so that you can focus on the words being introduced, and you can keep the necessities of grammar in the picture without complicating it. When historical figures are mentioned, you are asked to imagine that they are still alive. In the unit Preliminary matters, the basics are given: the Spanish alphabet, a pronunciation guide, numbers, punctuation, word recognition, common greetingsa kindergarten of sorts for a Spanish student of any age.

The main body of the text includes ten units, each covering hundreds of new vocabulary words, along with the grammatical structures that give them life. As you work through the text, you will sense the intimate connection between grammar and vocabulary: Each needs the other to be meaningful.