El Puente, A New Bridge to the Spanish Language: A Complete Guide and Exercise Manual for the English Speaker (B & W) (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781548426064)

This new complete guide and exercise manual offers an easy and natural approach to learning Spanish.

You will find out that this book will be your best friend in the journey to achieve your goal.
Learning a language can be frustrating. I learned English as an adult and the methodology that helped me to cross the bridge from Spanish to English constitutes the structure of this book.
I tell you It can be done!
This language guide is a consolidation of my own experience and a proof that it works. I am taking you, by the hand, back through the "language bridge" I traveled a few years ago. On page 26, there is a discussion of the time it takes and how you can monitor your progress.

The student of a foreign language should be exposed to "verbal language", to the "written language", and to brief descriptions of the grammatical differences. Learning a secondary language is not a mechanical substitution of words for words.

You will learn Spanish with the Joneses "and their friends." You will encounter dialogs where they discuss their daily life and concerns. Follow them through the book and discover how their lives evolve and how they achieve or do not achieve their goals.

Will Cora stop nagging her husband? Will Amy be accepted into college? Did the Smiths enjoy their cruise in the Caribbean? Will Amy tell her Facebook friends?

Each of the 50 Spanish text samples has associate tables of glossary to reduce the need for a bilingual dictionary. The themes are simple and entertaining: a trip to the Iguassu falls, a hot air balloon ride in Spain, sheep ranches, polo facts, the origin of the commercial apple, and so on.

The student should familiarize himself / herself with the sample sentences and study the comparative grammar only to understand the differences. For example, you might already know that the verb "To be" has two forms in Spanish to indicate when something is permanent and when something is temporary.

Unit 11 will introduce you to a peculiar form of the past tense in Spanish that indicates when something was done "often or continuously" in the past, instead of only "once". It takes a while to master the concept.

Unit 16 discusses the Spanish Subjunctive mood. The Subjunctive is a form of the verb used by the Spanish speaker to express the "intention to influence" what another person does. Because there is no correlation in English, to master this form of the verb requires additional Units 17, 18 and 19. I include many examples, explanations, and exercises to aid in the effort.

You will find 200 additional seed-words illustrated in full color and presented, each one, by a different elf. These illustrations appear at random to break the monotony of the text and to provide an additional stimulation to the cognitive part of your brain.