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I'd highly recommend A New Reference Grammar of Modern Spanish as a reference book.

I think what has helped me the most with learning Spanish is trying to read - and reading aloud. Below are some various suggestions on what you can do to continue.

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Go to this site and try to record yourself saying all the phonemes and try to mimic them.

I'd say you can ignore the "espirantes" phonemes though - maybe I can't hear them, but I don't think most Spanish speakers use them. And it'll make it a whole lot harder to understand you if you try to use them.

Spanish is a very phonetic language, so once you get the phonemes down - you can practice on pretty much any Spanish text even if you don't have the source audio.

If you don't know how a word is pronounced, you can check: forvo.com/wordreference.com/spanishdict.com.

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After you have basic pronunciation, I'd suggest start reading. If you can listen to Spanish radio/watch subtitles, you should be able to read.

I'd highly recommend getting a Kindle paperwhite for this. Since you only use it to read, you don't really have to worry about getting distracted. It's very easy to read from and you don't have to worry about reading in the sun/dark.

If you don't know a word, you can easily look it up just by touching the word for a couple seconds. If there's a phrase of interest, it's really easy to save and look at later.

I'd suggest saving phrases that are something you might use yourself, or are things you don't understand grammatically. Go back to those later and figure out the grammar or practice using the phrases.

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Another useful site is Lang-8.com. I'll admit I haven't learned how to efficiently use this site. But it allows you to write things that are corrected by native speakers.

I'd suggest trying to write in a manner more typical of speech than writing when you use it.

Or you could also play around with sentence structures you got from reading/show/radio to make sure you understand them correctly.

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There are sites/apps you could try to practice speaking with Natives. HelloTalk / wespeke.com /interpals.net / or various chatrooms you can probably find with google.

I couldn't try HelloTalk because I don't have a smartphone and didn't have much luck finding people to talk to in the past.

I'm currently using BaseLang to practice speaking. It's a site for one-on-one tutoring for $129/month. It's a bit on the expensive side if the only reason you want to continue Spanish is so you don't lose what you currently have. (I'm not one to talk though, I'll don't have any reason to learn Spanish.)

I find it much more efficient to try to learn grammar on my own and then use them to practice concepts.

The main reason for using BaseLang in my case is because my free time is during an awkward time (EST morning) and I like being able to schedule practice sessions which would be virtually impossible otherwise (without paying for it).

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There was another post in /r/languagelearning that would be worth the read for you: [Here](
https://www.reddit.com/r/languagelearning/comments/5ian7q/language_learning_a_howto/).

Well look mate I'll paste below the resources I'd be using to kick-start your Spanish. Even at your level I'd say these would be worth giving a go to bolster your speaking and listening. It's an old comment so I'm just gonna paste the whole thing below:

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Well, If I had to redo my initial learning all over again and I was in your position this is what I'd do and these are the resources I would use for that initial learning period.

Pick yourself up a copy of Madrigal's Magic Key to Spanish this was written back in the 50s but all the same principals apply and it's still in print. I see it as a no nonsense guide to Spanish and is something you could easily pack with you.

Pick up an Audio Course. There are a few out there but my personal favourite and the one which will teach you the vocabulary you need to know is Say Something in Spanish. each of these lessons is quite long about 40 minutes each I believe once you get into the middle parts of the course but this guy starts off with a core set of vocabulary and continues to build and build on it. Back when I did it I think the first 10 lessons were free and each additional lesson was £1 so it ended up costing about £40 total (money well spent).

The other courses I'd recommend are any of the Michel Thomas courses who has his own methods of explaining the grammar tenses (something you won't get in the Say Something in Spanish course) and will slowly introduce you to key words and concepts. Not crucial as Madrigal's Magic Key to Spanish will introduce these also but if you are an Oral learner and enjoy simply listening to explanations this could be for you.

I'd recommend this as a good starting point at least to see if learning the language is for you. From there you can look to take lessons (I use Italki which is a website where you can take lessons over Skype and find a language partner if you are so inclined) investigate using a flashcard strategy that works for you and find Spanish content in which you can immerse yourself (youtube video, books for Spanish learners, one of my favourites is Gritty Spanish which has a beginners program also)

The most important aspect of language learning is to find materials for you that are fun and engaging. For me I get a kick out of speaking the language and being understood so I take every opportunity I can get to go to language exchanges depending on where I am (Check out Mundo Lingo or Meetup.com if that's something that interests you). So my learning focus tends to be on spoken Spanish rather then the type of language you might see in an epic fantasy novel.

All the best on your language learning journey. It's tough work but I extremely rewarding.

Some years ago, I wrote a screenplay for a short film about a cursed Aztec sword that was found by a Young man in modern times, and he fought against all kind of monsters and creatures from Mexican folklore and mythology.

This was never filmed, but we took a lot of conceptual pictures, and some friends made a few drawings, we even build a real black macuahuitl.

Using this old drawings (with the approval of the friends who drew it), I finished the prologue of the story, in storybook form. It’s a very short story, and I made it bilingual, so people who knows english or spanish are able to read it.

It has 16 pages with drawings, but the digital version will be free until tuesday, so, if someone wants to download it, I’ll add the links on Amazon Mexico and Amazon US (It's free in every marketplace).

Thank you for taking the time to read this, downloading it, and giving me your opinion.

Black Macuahuitl on Amazon US: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07JR4SCMF

Black Macuahuitl on Amazon MX: https://www.amazon.com.mx/dp/B07JR4SCMF

The Schaum is a pretty good grammar text book with exercises throughout.

A linguistics text on Spanish won't really be good for learning the language, but as you encounter aspects of the language you find interesting you can find relevant linguistics books/articles which you can research further. E.g.

• Distinction between types of past subjunctive, the decline of the future subjunctive
  
• The Disappearing Spanish Verb Form in -Re, Leavitt O. Wright
  
• http://www.wikilengua.org/index.php/Pret%C3%A9rito_imperfecto_de_subjuntivo
  
• Terminal letters as indicative of noun gender
  
• A Simplified Approach for Teaching the Gender of Spanish Nouns, John J. Bergen
  
• A Frequency-based Analysis of the Norms for Spanish Noun Gender, Jens H. Clegg
  
• Phonology (and orthography) changes over time and between dialects
  
• Seseo, ceceo, distinción, heheo, yeísmo etc
  
• From Latin to Spanish: Historical phonology and morphology of the Spanish Language, Paul M. Lloyd
  
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_orthography#Older_conventions
  
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_phonology#Dialectal_variation
  
• Clitic agreement
  
• On the Absence of Spanish Past Participial Object Clitic Agreement: the AGRo Parameter in Romance, Jon Franco
  
• Spanish Clitics and Participles: A Historical Perspective, A. K. Barry
  
• Contrast in modern usage of cognate verbs with other romance languages
  
• Explanations for Language Universals, Brian Butterworth, Bernard Comrie, Östen Dahl
  
• History of 2nd person pronouns, conjugation, and modern dialectical variations
  
  
  etc.
  
  Wikipedia and Wikilengua are quite good starting points too.

I started with Assimil but it's seems as if the book's price doubled since I bought it last year.

If you can't afford it, go for [Complete Spanish Step-by-Step] (https://www.amazon.com/Complete-Spanish-Step-Barbara-Bregstein/dp/1259643417/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1536583013&sr=1-3&keywords=advanced+spanish+step+by+step). It's super comprehensive and has a great structure for students who want to use it for self-study. I'd recommend using Language Transfer' along side it (free)

Te deseo mucha suerte :D

This is a great little review book of grammar exercises for ~$7 on Amazon (used).
https://www.amazon.com/Ultimate-Spanish-Practice-Foreign-Language/dp/0071847588

I like the Anki flashcard app for reviewing vocabulary.

Children's television is great for listening practice. It can be helpful to think about what region you'll be visiting most often and consume their local media as slang can vary greatly. (I generally consume Argentine media as that's where I visit most frequently: Mundo Zamba and Tiranos Temblad are two good examples on YouTube).

MeetUp.com often has conversation groups that meet for lunch of coffee to get some low-pressure speaking practice in. Universities usually have clubs that do the same.

Reading material I also recommend starting with children's stories. And again I focus my experiences on Argentina, e.g. Luis Pescetti and Pablo de Santis

There are lots of decent books out there. I have a pretty decent college textbook that goes over every aspect of Spanish grammar, but I wouldn't recommend its format is not as good as a proper grammar reference. I do, however, recommend this book:

A New Reference Grammar of Modern Spanish

This one seems to be all-inclusive and well-written, so I'd go with this one.

Pro tip: If you're starting out, a grammar reference will be of little use at the very beginning, but you'll find it invaluable as time goes on and you're trying to compose the language.

If you want to really learn the language, I'm sad to say that probably the best approach is rote memorization of words. Despite what the purveyors of language products would have you believe, there really is no skipping this step. When I initially learned Spanish, my time was divided into 50% vocabulary, 20% spoken conversation, 20% grammar study, and 10% composition, and that worked really well for me. To enhance your vocabulary, there are a ton of awesome interactive exercises here.

Also, if you want to talk to a fluent speaker, just give me a PM, I'll be more than happy to chat or answer any questions you may have.

For a grammar book, I would suggest either the Practice Makes Perfect Spanish series, since they have a lot of different workbooks on different subjects. They have one called Basic Spanish which targets beginners: link

Also, there's the Easy Spanish Step by Step series: link

Both have exercises, vocabulary and answer keys to everything so for written practice, they can be pretty helpful!

Practice Makes Perfect Spanish... https://www.amazon.com/dp/0071841857?ref=ppx_pop_mob_ap_share

I really like this workbook-there are a ton of examples and many english sentences, expressions and paragraphs that you translate into Spanish. I find it very challenging and interesting.
I like grammar so please keep that in mind.

Im currently going through Easy Spanish Step-by Step by Barbara Bregstein. It has pretty decent explanations with exercises that follow. They are decently priced on amazon.

I would also suggest the library. Mine has a lot of audio books including pimsleur, subscription to Mango languages free for members and tons of other resources.

This is the first one:
https://www.amazon.com/Spanish-Step-Step-Barbara-Bregstein/dp/0071463380/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1524764568&sr=8-3&keywords=easy+spanish

I also bought the second book but have not started it:
https://www.amazon.com/Advanced-Spanish-Step-Step-Accelerated/dp/0071768734/ref=pd_sim_14_3?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=0071768734&pd_rd_r=QHCHPW7S4D9WRY7E7J42&pd_rd_w=lSsan&pd_rd_wg=HDnwj&psc=1&refRID=QHCHPW7S4D9WRY7E7J42

I also bought this book to help with verbs because verbs are a huge part of spanish
https://www.amazon.com/Ultimate-Spanish-Review-Practice-Second/dp/0071797831/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1524764647&sr=1-1&keywords=The+ultimate+spanish+verb

Last November I went to Argentina with essentially no knowledge of Spanish. I started off using this. It's pretty solid. The section on grammar is really short, but it has plenty of conversational phrases, a very basic dictionary, and simple conjugation charts for maybe 15 or so of the most frequently used verbs.

It was pretty helpful. I also used this book as an introduction to grammar: http://www.amazon.com/English-Grammar-Students-Spanish-Learning/dp/0934034303

You can pick up a decent 2 way dictionary in BsAs, there are bookstores everywhere. Walrus Books sells mostly used English language books but I found a cheap Spanish-English dictionary there as well as one of those "500 verb conjugations" books.

Enjoy your time in Argentina!


Edit: Obviously the book isn't specific to Argentine Spanish, but you'll figure it out quickly.


The vos form is simple; just drop the i from the vosotros form, unless the i is an í in which case there won't a preceding é or á. And in the pretérito vos is identical to tú. And in the imperativo just drop the d of the vosotros form, and stress the final syllable.


There are differences in a lot of vocabulary, but people will understand you fine and fill you in on what the Argentine word choice would be if you ask them to.

If you don't have one already, I would recommend one in English to begin with. I swear by the one below. I had the 4th Edition for many years but it was getting a bit tatty and coffee-stained, so I've just bought the 5th Editiion.

A New Reference Grammar of Modern Spanish
https://www.amazon.com/New-Reference-Grammar-Modern-Spanish/dp/1444137697/

If you ever hear anyone mentioning "Butt and Benjamin" when discussing Spanish grammar, this is the book they're talking about.

Edit: It's worth pointing out that I would call this a descriptive rather than a prescriptive grammar book. In other words, it tells you how things are rather than how people would like them to be :-)

Penguin books releases a series called Cuentos in Espanol. Basically, they are proper short stories by great writers but one page is in Spanish and the opposite has the literal translation in English. Really great resource and you don't feel like a 4 year old.

Here's one:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Spanish-Short-Stories-Cuentos-Parallel/dp/0140265414/ref=sr_1_8?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1332104846&sr=1-8

(Native german speaker living in the US) After I started with Madrigal's Magic Key to Spanish: A Creative and Proven Approach, I got Große Lerngrammatik Spanisch: Regeln, Anwendungsbeispiele, Tests which I like very much as a different, very well organized angle into the Spanish language.

One thing you should definitely focus on is verb tenses. This is an excellent workbook I've used in the past. It will summarize all the different tenses and force you to use them. It will also introduce some new vocabulary for you so you will want a Spanish dictionary handy.

Some college-level texts are also recommended here, but they might be more detailed than you need. I believe the general placement tests are generally easier than the CLEP (which I am taking), but they are usually geared to high school students with at least a few semesters under their belt.

There is also a combined version.
Complete Spanish Step-by-Step

I picked up a "like new" used version for $10 including shipping. Seems well worth it for a book I have seen recommended several times. There is also an app that goes with it with some audio flashcards. I haven't used it, only installed it, so I can't give any review on that part.

I would second Duolingo -- it has dozens (hundreds?) of lessons divided into bite-sized chunks. Most importantly, it exposes you to listening to spanish phrases.

I also find the Teach Yourself line of language books to very good for learning quickly -- they're not very grammar heavy and focus mostly on teaching you to have simple conversations. I'm a fan of this one: http://amzn.com/0071420169

I used this book when I went to Spain and found it very helpful: The Penguin Spanish Phrasebook: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0141039078/

Each phrase includes pronunciation guides specific to Spain too, as well as cultural tidbits. And possibly (not certain) a bit on Catalan too, which you'll encounter a lot there.

But as roboduck said, pretty much any Spanish language book will indicate if it's more geared toward Latin America or Europe. I've taken courses both ways where I am (US), but it's worth just asking the organization.

Right now I'm using Easy Spanish Step by Step and Pimsleur mostly. I will sometimes listen to Language transfer or watch youtube teachers and lastly I will use duolingo during my train ride in the morning or when I just want a short break from work.

So far Pimsleur helps a ton with actually listening to and speaking the language, while the book gives me a more robust understanding of the actual grammar and empowers me to form my own thoughts. All the sources help expose me to common grammar.

The last thing I do is when I think things I'll often try to see if I can figure out how to say it in spanish just in my head.

One tip for using duolingo though that's helped my learning, for the statements in spanish, try not to look at the phone and listen first and try to understand in your head before you look at the phone at all. If you can't make out the words with just listening (or when a new word is introduced) look only at the statement, not the answer portion and try understanding again. Generally try to avoid looking at the answer portion because usually I've found the answer to be obvious which is unhelpful. Translate in your head first, then select an answer. But always remember that it's not a primary resource. I try to get at least a half hour of spanish every day and I don't include duolingo time in that.

English Grammar For Students of Spanish is excellent!

I really enjoyed this
https://www.amazon.com/Laugh-Learn-Spanish-Featuring-Better/dp/007141519X

My library had it. Check your library for stuff. I couldn't believe how much they had.

Schaum's Outline of Spanish Grammar is an old-school, inexpensive, workbook which may help. Plenty of structure, solid explanations, tons of practice.

https://www.amazon.com/Practice-Perfect-Complete-Spanish-Grammar/dp/0071763430


I'm not sure if this is what you're asking. I'm using this and currently find it very helpful. If you type in the name of the book into Google, a link from the-eye.eu pops up with the complete PDF.

• Teach Yourself Spanish (Latin or España)
  
• Colloquial Spanish (Latin or España)
  
• Easy Spanish Step by Step (I think it's Latin American only)
  
• Assimil Spanish with Ease (España only)

https://www.amazon.com/Spanish-Step--Step-Barbara-Bregstein/dp/0071463380/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8


you can get this used on amazon

I am a big fan of the alternative approach taken by Madrigal's Magic Key to Spanish.

It starts from scratch but focuses on getting you speaking Spanish from the very first chapter, without miring you in endless conjugations and exceptions.

Hay una antología que quizá le gustare: Lazos: Gramática y vocabulario a través de la literatura, por Diana Frantzen (editora).

In one of my college courses we used this:
https://www.amazon.com/Aproximaciones-al-estudio-literatura-hispánica/dp/0073385379

Este libro me ayudó mucho.