Manual de gramática with Atajo CD-ROM: Grammar Reference for Students of Spanish

Rating:
Summary: Best grammar book out there!
Review: An indispensable resource for Spanish-learners-some of the clearest grammar explanations I've ever seen, and lots of practice exercises, with the answers included at the end. In addition, there are charts summarizing key grammatical features of the language.

Less useful is the Atajo CD that accompanies the book. Buy the book used if you can, and don't worry if you get the CD with it-or else just ignore the CD when you get the book. The word-processing program is nice if you have no other way to type accents in Spanish, but take a couple hours and learn to type accents in Word and you won't need this program anymore (hint: for PC users, type CTRL+apostrophe+vowel to get the necessary accents á, é, í, ó, ú; CTRL+~+n (make sure you release the shift key before typing the n!) for the ñ).

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Rating:
Summary: Best reference I've found so far
Review: Packed with information, explanantions, examples and exercises. I love it. Clearly laid out.

Rating:
Summary: Great as a supplement to a linguistics course
Review: The book provides a very good overview of the rules of the language, but doesn't explain why the language functions that way. Excellent charts with explanations of adverb/preposition/verb usage, good coverage of verb tenses. Atajo CD is useful, but not really worth the cost--better spend your money on a cheap subject-by-subject book of vocabulary. Spell-check included, but the word-processor is not great and special letters will not copy into the program if you type in another.