Seymour Resnick
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By: Dover Publications
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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 101
Average rating: 4.0 of 5
You'd do better looking up words in a dictionary. 1 out of 5 stars.
1 of 2 people found this review helpful.
A totally useless book with words selected haphazardly with only one explanation given, which hardly covers the different meanings of some words depending on the context. You could do better to yourself by opening a dictionary and selecting words in random. I got lured by its low price and wasted my money.
Useful guide, but not flawless 4 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.
Is this booklet worth the $2 that Amazon currently charges? Most certainly. I wouldn't place an order just to buy it, of course, but you should throw it in with anything else you might be buying.
If you do not speak any Spanish at all, this book will probably have limited usefulness to you until you get a fair grasp of its grammar. Once you're there, though, this book shines.
Here's how I recommend you use this: instead of a guide to 1001 words, use it as a guide to 1001 *sentences*, because each word has a sentence example for it. Put all the sentences in a flash card program such as Anki or Mnemosyne. (If you've never used such a flash card program, you really should. They're great.) You can skip over sentences that are too easy, of course, but a lot of the sentences will be interesting even if you already know the word.
However, you have to be a bit careful, because the entries do contain some mistakes, and this is why I must give it 4 stars instead of 5. For instance, the entry for "alcoba" has the sentence "Buscamos un apartamiento con dos alcobas" ("We're looking for an apartment with two bedrooms") -- "apartamiento" should be "apartamento". The entry for "amigo" has "Quiero presentar algunos amigos míos" has at least one mistake (there should be an "a" after "presentar"), but a native speaker told me it still sounds awkward and should be something like "Quiero presentarles a unos amigos míos". There was another sentence where the "a" was omitted with presentar, but I can't find it right now. So if you use this book, you have to stay on your toes a bit and accept that there may be a couple of mistakes in it. I think that, and the $2, are small price to pay for having 1001 sentences at your fingertips, though.
Editorial Review:
Indispensable learning aid includes definitions of common Spanish words arranged by such categories as foods, numbers, days of the week, months, colors, seasons and family. At the book's heart is a dictionary, from a to zapato, where each word is used in a Spanish sentence (with English translation) demonstrating its proper use.
