By Elizabeth Gregory
Every spring I teach a beginner Spanish night class for adults. It's not a formal college course or anything, just something offered by a local school district under their adult education evening classes. I mainly provide handouts for this course; however many times people ask for supplemental texts or reading materials to supplement their study at home. Although I do have 2 recommendations, I also have some advice for choosing self-study language learning materials:
- Audio materials are great, but it is always good to have a book to supplement it. If the audio course does not come with one, pick out one separately.
- Borders and Barnes and Noble usually have a decent foreign language section. Spanish is their biggest selection.
- Take some time and leaf through the materials. Choose ones that match your goals. In other words, there are some books that are very drill heavy, others are more picture dictionary type of learning materials, others include grammar lessons, etc. Sometimes one of each may be appropriate. Two resources that are a must in my opinion are a bilingual dictionary (level appropriate) and a verb book. My personal favorite is 501 Spanish verbs (also made in other languages).
- You may need to brush up on your English grammar to grasp/understand certain concepts in a foreign language. If this is the case, I highly recommend the book English Grammar for Students of Spanish. I know this book is also available for students of French, German, Italian, Russian and Japanese.
- For a "pocket-sized" crash course book that includes lessons, exercises and more I recommend Spanish Coursebook by Living Language.
- The bottom line is to get out there and look through the materials. It's difficult to make your decisions without deciding what your goals are and what materials are good for you. Don't be surprised if you find that some may seem confusing or poorly organized.
Happy language learning!
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