Picture Perfect Spanish: A Survival Guide to Speaking Spanish

by Jerry Lucas

Book Overview

By making the intangible tangible through fun and easily memorable pictures, Lucas makes learning Spanish fast. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1930853009
• ISBN13: 9781930853003
• Release Date: January 2001
• Publisher: Lucas Educational Systems
• Length: 368 Pages
• Weight: 1.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 7.1" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

muy bueno!

I enjoy Jerry Lucas' material. It is fun, creative, and effective. The material was delivered in a timely manner.

The Good, the Bad, and the misundertanding

The reviewer who criticised the method of using association (even with English words) misunderstands the purpose of such mnemonic techniques in learning languages, and so a portion of that review is just invalid as being from one who misunderstands. Such methods are not PERMANENT 'crutches' but temporary splints that allow one to remember words long enough to see and use them effectively (even if slowly) until they 'stick', and thus this book offers a wonderful resource for those learning their first 600 (most critical) words. That reviewer is HOWEVER CORRECT to criticize when such a method is used for words which can be more easily learned as cognates (e.g., medico should be learned from it's association with medical -- perhaps with only enough mnemonics to handle the "co" or ensure it is found when looking for a word for "doctor". One can argue that a large part of the value of this book is to teach the method in the context of Spanish, which can be applied to more vocabulary, other langages, or other subjects entirely. One important key to effective mnemonics is that there are dozens if not hundreds of mnemonic methods and techniques, and one must avoid getting stuck on any one method, but pick the one most suitable for the current item(s) to be learned. If you are learning Spanish and have yet to learn your first 1000 words or so, buy this book.

An effective system of using pictures to teach

In Picture Perfect Spanish: A Survival Guide To Speaking Spanish, Jerry Lucas employs an effective system of using pictures to teach more than 600 words of Spanish in such a way as to insure correct pronunciation, along with basic sentence structure, grammar, conjugation. The reader will quickly pick up hundreds of common phrases enabling him or her to speak clear coherent Spanish. This completely "user friendly" and highly recommended manual is the equivalent of one year's beginning Spanish and will have the reader up and running with a working vocabulary and conversational skill far more quickly than the usual classroom approach to beginning Spanish. Picture Perfect Spanish is also the ideal "refresher" reference for those who have once studied Spanish but have forgotten most of what they learned over the intervening years.