Dorothy Richmond

It's crazy that you can buy this book for only $12. (amazon.ca) It's full of useful information that will help you understand how to use verbs in different tenses... the explanations are clear and there are examples after them and plenty of useful exercises (mostly translating sentences and paragraphs but there are a few true and false) . Going through the book thoroughly once, I've improved my spanish and I'm now a lot more confident with using verbs. There are a couple things that would show more have been good to include...
One thing is, like another person said, mixing things that you have gone over earlier in the book with newer info for exercises. It would help a lot. Going over irregular verbs even more would help as well. Still, the book is great, lots of info, lots of exercises, I've been studying spanish for a while and I don't see any noticeable typos..there's a little dictionary part at the back, spanish-english and english-spanish. The book is well organized and in my opinion, it's worth even 5 times the price. show less

Successfully learning Spanish is about practicing the language, contextually and aloud, in a natural conversational setting. By immersing yourself in opportunities to speak with other native speakers while allowing for only minimal 'outs' to revert back to English, understanding the new language will occur quickly and efficiently. Though not necessarily easy. All other learning—memorizing vocab, verb conjugations, reading, writing, etc.—is important, but fundamentally pointless unless show more you're also learning to speak. It's taken me years to realize this.

That said, as long as you're getting in daily conversation practice, Dorothy Richmond's Practice Makes Perfect: Spanish Verb Tenses is an excellent learning supplement for the Spanish student. The worksheets range from simple fill-in-the-blanks to more substantial paragraph translations, with each chapter starting with a succinct explanation of a particular verb conjugation. show less

I began work on this self-study workbook months ago, doing a few exercises almost each day. I finally finished. Dorothy Richmond packed this with lots of practice exercises, to the benefit of her students. My background is in educational psychology and I belong to the school that believes that practice is the key to learning, so this approach is ideal. I have to admire the author for her superb work in constructing all the exercises. As long as it took me to complete them, I know that show more writing them was longer and harder work than doing them. Hail Dorothy Richmond! show less

Dorothy Richmond is so good at explaining grammar rules in a straight-forward manner. What I like most is that you're spending a lot more time doing exercises to use what you've learned than you are reading explanations. This book and the Verb Tenses book should be on every Spanish learner's bookshelf, no matter what level you're at. If you're thinking of buying it, just do it! =) I have yet to go through her "Practice Makes Perfect: Spanish Vocabulary" book, and I hope they are as great as show more her grammar books. show less