Breaking Out of Beginner's Spanish: A Book Review

Breaking Out of Beginner's Spanish by Joseph J. Keenan
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

It took me a little over 2 months to get through this book. The reason is two-fold: 1) it reads slightly more interestingly than a text book and 2) there's so much information on every page, that I could only digest a few pages at a time. And by digest, I mean begin to soak up any of it. In my first reading of this, I can honestly say I've probably taken very little of the instruction to heart. This book is SO full of insight it's bursting. I started off trying to take notes and make an example sentence out of each new concept I came across. If I had continued doing that I'd probably be around page 50 or so right now. I know I will need to re-read this many times to gather all the fruits here. In my opinion, any serious Spanish student that has made it through the intermediate level-- a basic understanding of all grammar structures, although not at all comfortable using most of them-- needs 3 things: a good electronic Spanish/English dictionary, a small notebook for notes, and this book. It takes what you learned in class, smashes it to pieces, then rearranges those pieces into usable, conversational Spanish. Which is the whole goal of any language student-- to converse, am I right? Anyway, don't hesitate, purchase this for your own library.


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