Product Description

Solve the mysteries of Spanish past-tense verbs

Practice Makes Perfect: Spanish Past-Tense Verbs Up Close puts the spotlight on this tricky grammar trouble spot. It boasts plenty of opportunities for practicing your language skills, as well as extensive examples based on a conversational style that will keep you engaged. The book also features a unique answer key that gives you more than just a listing of correct answers; it clues you in on the "why" behind them.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #80403 in Books
• Published on: 2008-11-01
• Original language: Spanish, English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 128 pages

About the Author

Eric Vogt, Ph.D., teaches Spanish at Seattle Pacific University.

Customer Reviews

Useful Grammar practice
On starting a recent Spanish conversation course - mainly for revision (or so I thought!) I realised that I had forgotten a lot of the grammar that I had learnt in the past - and that I had to do something about it!!

The pretirite? Barely ever used it - the past perfect was easier - (and more colloquial) - however, thanks to this book, i am now far more confident in my use of both. i have also pulled up on my use of the imperfect and am getting better at knowing which tense to use when!

What I really like about this book is the way that most chapters deal with a different tense - although, when there may be confusion as to which tense to use, there is a chapter to help you.
Each chapter is supported by a graduated series of exercises - which can be used with or without the excellent answer key at the end of the book.
Although it is part of a series of similar books, the exercises are different from those in other books in the series, so it provides further support in your understanding and development.

A great buy for those who are serious about their progress in learning of Spanish grammar!

Good luck!

Excellent Book on Spanish Past Tenses
The author sent me a free copy of this book recently. It came at a very good time since I'm about to teach my Spanish class the difference between the imperfect and the preterit. I will probably use some of the exercises in this book to help my students understand the past tenses.

Table of Contents

1. The Imperfect: Description and Background
2. The Preterit: Narration, or what happened?
3. The imperfect and the preterit together: Narrating and describing the past
4. The present perfect: What have you done for me lately?
5. The pluperfect: What happened before something else
6. The conditional: What would be and the future of the past
7. The conditional perfect: What would have been
8. The sequence of tenses: Observations on the indicative and the subjunctive

The section on the present perfect is very interesting. The author has noticed that students have been using the English present perfect less and less recently. I have noticed that several of my Spanish-speaking friends use the Spanish present perfect less than I had learned.

Brandon Simpson

Excellent in-depth explanations and very useful exercises
Excellent grammatical explanations and the exercises make you think, understand and learn - particularly as in the appendix, there are full reasons given for the correct answers.

After working though the first three chapters, my understanding of whether to use the Preterite or Imperfect in a given situation has improved immensely. I look forward to moving on through the book and consider the purchase price worthwhile just for the first three chapters.

Previously, I'd used the other excellent Practice Makes Perfect:Spanish Verb Tenses by Dorothy R. and I was also going to Spanish classes, but I needed more practise and better understanding. This book, Spanish Past-Tense Verbs Up Close has given it to me.