Product Summery
Preface
Side by Side Spanish & English Grammar presents the essential elements of Spanish grammar—usually covered in a high school program or in the first year of college Spanish—“side by side” with their English counterparts. This comparative/contrastive approach allows students to build on what they already know, as they see the ways in which English and Spanish are similar, and to avoid potential trouble spots.
Side by Side Spanish & English Grammar has been used in both high school and college Spanish classes, and even in some English classes for a few students who were having trouble in understanding their English grammar text. Its vocabulary is, for the most part, limited to the most frequently used Spanish words.
It has been used as
1. a reference book for beginning students, for whom the standard works are too complex to be useful. This allows students a means for independent inquiry.
2. a means of quick review of material forgotten over the summer or material missed because of illness.
3. a means of helping a student in a new school catch up with the class.
4. a means of organizing or summarizing material presented in the primary text, especially for students whose learning style favors an “organized approach.”
5. a means of providing a common background for talking about language with students who have studied English in different ways, so that their study of Spanish will show them something about how language works, one of the expectations of many college language requirements.
6. an alternative method of explaining grammatical points in both English and Spanish to relieve the classroom teacher of the task.Special features of the book that students will find useful include
1. a standard format that introduces each part of speech and answers the most common questions about it.
2. Quick Check charts that allow students to express themselves with more confidence,since they can independently check their sentences against a model.
3. appendices that identify and summarize trouble spots, such as the differences between interrogative pronouns and adjectives, and the uses of ser and estar, por and para.
4. an exercise section that tests understanding of the main grammatical areas covered in the book, plus Using your Spanish, a section new to this edition, that prepares students for communication in Spanish.
We hope that this text will provide ways for students to increase their independent work and to adapt material to their own learning styles and situations.