Download Easy Spanish Reader fb2

If you prefer material in which every character is tall, attractive, intelligent, popular, holds some office in their main activities and/or is captain of the team, lives in a big house, is a teenager with their whole life ahead of them, and lives in a two-parent family whose parents are always doctors, lawyers, or professors, then, this is for you. I couldn't bear it. Plus, supposedly it was first published in 2004 but the material seems more dated than that, to me. Or were we really still using tape recorders back then? I've lost track.

However, this book is edited much better than the one whose content I liked a lot better, Spanish Short Stories For Beginners: 8 Unconventional Short Stories to Grow Your Vocabulary and Learn Spanish the Fun Way!, by Olly Richards. But at least one of the first characters I ran into in Richards' book, his father was an electrician and friend never knew his father. Heckuvalot closer to real life. Also, this book's exercises are much better than the ones in Richards' book, which are feeble at best.

But if you really, really want helpful exercises, the one to get is Graded Spanish Reader: Primera Etapa (World Languages), by Justo Ulloa and Leonor Alvarez de Ulloa. Dated (although my copy is decades old - maybe it's been updated), but wow you're going to learn some helpful Spanish grammar and usage while you read the stories. Intensive exercises that were pretty much the most helpful I found anywhere. Supposedly "primera etapa", but it might seem a little advanced for people who want to learn slowly.

I found this "easy Spanish reader" to be a lot easier to understand than I expected. My expectations were based on the Easy French Reader, which had a lot of words I had never heard of. I studied French one semester, plus a ton on my own. I had not studied Spanish on my own much at all, and had one semester of it in college (a different college from the one I took French from, but both still covered a lot of ground).

My understanding was enhanced by the fact that there are a few words that are translated to the side of the reading assignment, even though I already knew several of the words already. It also has questions for you to answer, and crossword puzzles. I really, really like this book and would recommend it to others.

2016 update: this is available on the my language app so you can listen to some of the audio on there as well as practice vocabulary. Big improvement. My Spanish has improved am awful lot and I'm able to fool natives with my Spanish accent.

Original review.
I've been studying spanish with livemocha and it's great. However, When I record the paragraphs for natives to review, they tell me my pronunciation is perfect but I use an american english intonation. It's hard to learn the intonation because the stuff i've learned in livemocha so far are vocabulary and sentences (I'm in unit 3, lesson 1, of spanish 101). Nothing with a paragraph to learn the flow of stuff. The CD of this book is worth the cost of the book itself. It really makes up for this void. It allows for learning the flow of the language as well as the contractions. It also helps in developing listening comprehension skills.

I didn't take Spanish in school and i don't know been conjugation yet. I've prepped with just a few chapters of madrigal book and I can pronounce and understand the text in the first part of this book. I like how it has the little vocabulary helps in the margin for words one might not know.

The comprehension questions in the back are great. The answers are in the back of the book as well as on the CD-ROM.

You can't learn spanish solely from this book. However, I feel this complements livemocha/madrigal's magic key perfectly. Livemocha asks questions such as 'quien esta en la cama?" and I've learned to respond "la mujer esta in la cama." This book allows me to write it out and read and listen via the CD to improve comprehension.

The bottom line is I highly recommend this book. I'm in the first part at this time but will update this as I progress through the 2nd and third part.

I cannot give this easy reader a high enough rating. I enjoyed the way the book is composed. The three distinct parts are positioned in a way that really make it feel like three books in one.

The first part reads like a teen novel and while the story is not the most captivating thing I have ever read, the level of the story is very good for a person who is not too advanced in their studies. It was very simple reading but I did learn vocabulary in context which is the goal of the book.

The second part was like an abridged history of Mexico. It starts off in the pre-Spanish era and moves forward to modern times with very interesting stories of how the country has changed overy the centuries.

The third was my favorite in the account of Lazarillo de Tormes. This is iconic Spanish literature in very short stories. Without young Lazarillo, there would have never been an Oliver Twist or Huck Finn.

Do yourself a favor and try it. Money well spent for the person wanting to learn Spanish.