Berlitz Essential Spanish Book Review
Berlitz Essential Spanish will prepare you for numerous Spanish speaking situations with a focus on dialog, pronunciation, and grammar. And the Berlitz name is a trusted name with much time and experience in the teaching of foreign languages.
In addition to the direct sales of language learning courses and materials, they operate hundreds of language learning centers around the world.
Let's take a moment and look at the content of this essential Spanish course. The chapters in the book have a similar format. Here's the typical layout of the chapters: Each unit or chapter of the book has a topic or theme that runs through it. You can see a list of topics below.
- The chapters begin with a typical Spanish dialogue that's based on the chapter's topic. So in chapter 8, for example, which is called At The Hotel, it starts out with a Spanish dialog of someone checking into a hotel. These are all practical dialogs that'll prepare you for all the situations that will come up where you need to speak Spanish. The dialogs list the Spanish phrases with the English translations directly below.
- After the dialog is a section on pronunciation. This section lists the key words (and some short phrases), of the dialog and gives you a phonetic spelling so you know exactly how to pronounce them.
- Next comes a series of lessons. These lessons are for every chapter. It might be a lesson about some important irregular verbs used in the dialog. Or it could be about grammar, adverbs, Irregular Past Participles... Dozens of important lessons are presented in all the chapters of the book
- Then there's a section on vocabulary.
- The chapters end with a section of exercises - questions, fill in the blank, Spanish translation exercises. A great place to see how much you've learned and a way to know if you want to review anything before moving on. All the answers to the exercises are in the back of the book.
Topics and Titles
- Hello
- Introductions
- Going on a trip
- On the telephone
- Employment
- Review
- Restaurant
- Hotel
- Post Office
- Weather
- Shopping
- Review
- Directions
- Family
- Looking for something
- Review
- Illness
- Helping out
- Enjoy a meal
- Review
Book Features
- In the introduction are instructions on how to use the book and a guide to Spanish pronunciation.
- The book is 261 pages long.
- Suggested price of the book is $10.95 in US Dollars.