Almost Perfect…

Spanish Verb Tenses has almost all the attributes of a superior learning tool.  It…

1. Follows A Logical Progression – The workbook starts with the easy stuff, the present indicative, and progressively works its way through more difficult subject matter such as the preterite vs imperfect, perfect and progressive tenses, and finally the subjunctive mood.
2. Contains Clear, Concise Grammar Explanations – Each section of each chapter is prefaced by a brief explanation of the grammar point about to be drilled.  While short, the explanations build on each other and are clear enough that even absolute beginners will be able to follow along provided they start at the beginning.
3. Contains Tons And Tons Of Drills – There’s no getting past it:  learning Spanish requires massive amounts of drilling to pound proper usage into your brain, and there’s no shortage of that here.  Amazingly enough, the drills are varied and interesting enough that you never really get bored.  Each section will take you an average of 20 or 30 minutes each, which is long enough to really learn the material you’re focusing on but not long enough to become terribly monotonous.
4. Requires You To Generate Complete Thoughts – Most grammar workbooks out there simply have you fill in the blank with the correct conjugation of a given verb.  Thus, after a few problems your mind goes on conjugation-autopilot as you mechanically complete the rest of the exercises.  The problem with that approach is you never quite integrate vocabulary, grammar, and conversational skills that way.  I mean the correct verb is given to you, along with its meaning.  You’ll never learn that way.  Spanish Verb Tenses, on the other hand, forces you to generate complete sentences on your own in response to some prompt, often without telling you which verb to use.  This keeps you constantly on your toes trying to figure out what form the correct response should take as well as the appropriate vocabulary to use.  Trust me, you will learn natural sentence structure much better this way and retain a lot more vocabulary to boot.
5. Every Chapter Ends With A Writing Assignment – Every chapter contains at least one (sometimes two or three) short writing assignments where you are either given an English paragraph and asked to translate it (in the beginning) or given a topic and asked to generate a completely original Spanish paragraph on the subject all on your own (towards the end of the book).
6. Covers Every Verb Tense And Grammar Aspect In The Language – I can’t think of anything this workbook misses, off the top of my head.  It covers every tense and aspect of Spanish verbs you need to know, including the infamous subjunctive mood, when to use the preterite vs imperfect, and common special constructions involving specific verbs (ir a- et al).

…But Not Quite Perfect

Practice Makes Perfect: Spanish Verb Tenses is very much a master of the domain it purports to teach.  It claims to teach you everything you need to know about Spanish verbs and it accomplishes that goal very, very well; however, it doesn’t delve into aspects of Spanish grammar not related to verbs, such as pronouns, prepositions, noun gender, etc (for that, I highly recommend its companion workbook Practice Makes Perfect: Spanish Pronouns And Prepositions).

Additionally, its impossible to get any real conversational practice from an $8 workbook.  Spanish Verb Tenses will teach you to form Spanish sentences, no doubt, but there’s a big difference between being able to write Spanish and being able to speak Spanish.  Thus, you’ll either need to purchase a good audio program for conversational practice or hit up your local Mexican restaurant.  But overall, this is a very small nitpick.  It’s only $8 after all.

Buy Practice Makes Perfect: Spanish Verb Tenses and its companion Practice Makes Perfect: Spanish Pronouns And Prepositions from Amazon today.

Looking For Exhaustive Drills? Look Elsewhere

I am a big fan of drills and I must admit I’m not entirely satisfied by the quantity of material here. Sure, it covers all the important concepts but it doesn’t hit you with wave after wave of drill to really solidify the concepts in your mind like Dorothy Richmond’s two Practice Makes Perfect workbooks Spanish Verb Tenses and Spanish Pronouns And Prepositions. And a few of the drills that are there seem odd and out of place, such as the drills focusing on linguistic terminology: it’s great to know what a labial fricative is, but that won’t necessarily help me learn Spanish more quickly. That said, this book’s all-Spanish strategy really encourages you to think and operate entirely in the Spanish language in a way Richmond’s English-based workbooks just don’t.

The Not-Quite-Advanced Advanced Spanish Workbook

Despite the word “Advanced” in the title, I found the concepts and exercises in this book to be more intermediate than advanced so don’t let that scare you away. The explanations, while written entirely in Spanish, don’t go out of their way to use obscure vocabulary and most of the more difficult words are included in the vocabulary section of every chapter with English translations. I don’t think anybody with a bit more than a basic understanding of the language would find anything here unreasonably difficult, although lower-intermediate learners will probably have to spend considerably more time trying to decipher what’s going on. But hey, there’s no substitute for just sitting down and struggling through your lessons so that not necessarily a bad thing.

A Solid, But Not Perfect, Course

Ideally, I would like to see Practice Makes Perfect’s grammatical rigor and Advanced Spanish Grammar’s Spanish-based instruction combined into a single, exhaustive resource. Still, the fact that all three of these workbooks can be had for under $30 on Amazon makes this sort of complaint a bit silly. Based on the benefits of the all-Spanish instruction alone, I can highly recommend this book for anybody at an intermediate level or above. That said, I don’t think this book alone would be sufficient to really solidify some of the more advanced concepts in your brain due to the relative lack of drilling. I used this book alongside both of Richmond’s Practice Makes Perfect workbooks and saw some pretty dramatic improvements in my reading, writing, and speaking skills in just a few months. Of course, none of these books will help you with your listening, but that’s what audio programs are for (Pimsleur and Rosetta Stone, while a bit expensive, are my picks for that).

Buy Marcial Prado’s Advanced Spanish Grammar: A Self-Teaching Guide from Amazon.

So what if you only have $50 to spend? For starters, you’ll have to substitute hard work for sleek Spanish learning programs. The going will be tougher but if you’re diligent and work hard, you can absolutely achieve fluency for less than $50. Here are some tools, some free and some not, to help you reach your goal.

Spanish Grammar On A Budget

Fortunately, there are abundant quality, inexpensive grammar resources available. I recommend three in particular.

Practice Makes Perfect: Spanish Verb Tenses by Dorothy Richmond is, bar none, the very best Spanish verbs workbook on the market. It covers every verb tense in detail with copious amounts of exercises and plenty of space to fill in the answers. The feature that makes Spanish Verb Tenses so effective is that it requires you to formulate entire sentences, sometimes entire paragraphs, to complete the exercises. This provides a more holistic learning experience. Filling in the blank with the correct verb form is all well and good, but writing out the entire sentence requires you to put it all together. The translation exercises at the end of each unit, which require you to translate entire English sentences into their Spanish equivalents, are especially helpful at cementing what you’ve learned. Honestly, this was probably the best $9 I ever spent on a Spanish-learning product.

Practice Makes Perfect: Spanish Pronouns And Prepositions is the companion piece for the verb tenses workbook above. This time, Richmond focuses on Spanish pronouns and prepositions, including a few of the notorious sticklers like “por vs para,” the passive voice, direct and indirect object pronouns, the proper use of “lo que,” and other common difficulties. Pronouns And Prepositions follows the same basic format as Verb Tenses, requiring you to write complete sentences and paragraphs in response to questions. As far as order goes, I would recommend you complete Verb Tenses first followed by this one. Since Pronouns and Prepositions assumes at least a basic understanding of the Spanish verb system, it would be confusing for beginners to complete this workbook first.

Spanish Vocabulary On A Budget

I’ve already written in detail about Spanish Vocabulary Cards, which I think are not only the least expensive but also most effective way of building your Spanish vocabulary. Check out my post on vocabulary cards for more advice.

Reading the news in Spanish, dictionary in hand, is another excellent way to both build your vocabulary and improve your reading comprehension to boot. Since the news is usually written at 9th grade level of so, there are few big words or complicated grammar structures to trip you up. Even after just a month or two of study, you should know enough to at least get the gist of most news stories. Good online resources are CNN en Español and BBC Mundo.

Spanish Audio On A Budget

Here is the biggest weakness of the Spanish-for-under-$50-plan. It is nearly impossible to purchase a high-quality Spanish Audio Program for the 20-odd dollars you have left. While far from ideal, I would say the best value in this price range is probably the Living Language All-Audio Spanish course. You get a little over 6 hours of Spanish audio instruction (which isn’t really enough) and a booklet you can use along with the CD’s at home. On the plus side, you can do this program in your car on your way to work, turning an otherwise wasted commute into valuable Spanish practice. On the other hand, this program is probably more appropriate for intermediate learners than beginners, as the speech is fairly rapid and the program advances quickly. Overall, a worthwhile purchase for the price but not nearly long enough to do the job on its own.

Since All-Audio Spanish isn’t going to be enough, we’ll need to get creative and find ways to practice Spanish for free. For starters, check out my post on places to practice Spanish conversation. There are also a few online resources with Spanish lessons for beginners, most of them incorporating audio. The BBC has an excellent beginners program on their BBC Spanish website which includes audio, video, grammar, and even a short Spanish soap-opera to help make things more interesting. I recommend you start with the Talk Spanish series to get a feel for how the language is spoken in the real world and work your way up to the Spanish Steps program. Finally, you should complete the BBC Sueños course, which is considerably more advanced than the others.

Other than the recommendations above, you should continue talking to Spanish speakers, both in real life and via email, IM, etc, as often as possible. Fluency will come with time and hard work no matter how little you have available to spend.