Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)Jean Yates can now count me as a member of her fan club. Her book "Correct Your Spanish Blunders" is one of my most trusted Spanish learning aides, so I was already familiar with her scholarship when I stumbled across "Better Reading Spanish". I bought the book after only a cursory glance, and my initial hunch about its value has proved correct.
A book like this is long overdue. The syllabus of any high-school or college Spanish course is almost guaranteed to state that the goals are to help the student achieve proficiency in speaking, writing AND reading. Yet reading always seems to get the short end of the stick. How is an instructor to know whether students are tracking with the reading material, or pinpoint the source of their reading comprehension deficiencies? Errors in speaking and writing, on the other hand, are obvious, and those two areas usually dominate the coursework and in-class activities. For reading practice, the teacher generally assigns a primary source -- in my experience, either short stories or books -- assuming students will have minimal difficulty reading in a foreign language. But even with the guidance of patient and dedicated instructors, I still agonized over many long reading assignments. If only "Better Reading Spanish" (and its French counterpart) had been around when I was in college!
The most obvious feature of this book is the reading material, all of which was well chosen, IMO. I also found the selections highly engaging. But besides that, the book has a set of detailed and comprehensive self-test exercises after each selection, as well as sidebars on the various Spanish phrasing introduced in the reading. In particular, I liked the infobox describing Spanish's use of the gerund to express continuing action (e.g., va recogiendo, anda silbando, and the "seguir + gerund" I learned long ago).
For me, this book has taken the mystery out of unfamiliar words, idioms and grammatical constructions. It has also helped me discover the pleasure of reading original works without having to consult a dictionary, or worse yet, a translation. So once again I say bravo to Jean Yates, this time for her guidance on reading foreign-language text. A previously overlooked area of instruction now has the definitive self-help guide for mastering this important skill.
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New reading series brings foreign language acquisition into the 21st century
While the world produces more and more reading material each year, from magazines to newspapers to websites, why are most language learners still relying on contrived texts and classic literature for language acquisition? Providing entertaining contemporary texts in the original language, the Better Reading Language series is for those who want to brush up on a foreign language.
With the authentic materials provided in this series, readers will be able to peruse a Latin Grammys write-up in Spanish, a feature on Alain Ducasse's favorite recipes in French, or a review of a Milan fashion show in Italian. Readings on everything from music and sports to cinema and contemporary family life are arranged in increasing difficulty within chapters. Along the way, learners will find instruction and exercises to help develop improved reading speed, comprehension, and vocabulary.
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