As Spanish-speaking Mexico and the rest of Latin-America are our next-door neighbors, and since there are more and more immigrants from there (legal or otherwise), Spanish is a language we deal with more frequently than many others. In saying that, we should clarify that there are two main branches of Spanish: European Spanish (Castillian), spoken in Spain, and Latin-American Spanish (which has different dialects spokenall overthe South American continent). While the latter seems more applicable to us here on the West Coast, it's important to note that they're both Spanish. For differences and similarities, see the link at the right.
In our Spanish section, we carryfour main courses for students and a few resources:
- Speedy Spanish is an elementary course, written on a third grade reading level, although it has been successfully used by 1st graders through adults. The books move slowly and review often, with students first learning how to speak Spanish correctly before going on to grammar. Written with busy parents and home schoolers in mind, a variety of activities and cassettes make it possible for them to be worked and graded independently.
- Bob Jones University Spanish is written for high schoolers and meant to be taught by someone who knows Spanish. There are three levels, each of which includes a textbook, teacher's edition, workbook, workbook answer key, tests, test key and usually an audio set. We carry all the components for level 1 and can special-order the rest of the materials for 2 and 3.
- Tell Me More is an immersion-based software program. Similar to and meant for essentially the same audience as Rosetta Stone, but this contains five years of instruction in one package, with far more activities, more sophisticated speech recognition, and more language tools in general (for example, a dictionary is built in). The two primary complaints are it is harder to start with than Rosetta Stone, and it does not emphasize Latin-American pronunciation, primarily teaching Castillian.
- Living Language is a simple introduction to Spanish vocabulary and phrases. The compact set includes a small course book, Spanish-English dictionary and three audio CDs. Not a full-fledged course, but it is an affordable way to get started.
- Other than these courses, we also also offer the Santa Biblia (Spanish Bible), Usborne'sFirst Thousand Words, Spanish-English dictionaries from Larousse and Langenscheidt, a Spanish grammar flipper,andBarron's 501Spanish Verbs.
Free Online Resources:
Tomisimo Spanish-English Dictionary
Tomísimo is an English-Spanish, Spanish-English dictionary that makes finding words easy by automatically searching in both languages. Tomísimo (enormous tome) is an accurate description of this project, which aims to provide an unabridged, bilingual dictionary for the English and Spanish languages.
This online dictionary is being put together by a formerly home educated student now married and living in Mexico. When originally learning Spanish, he became frustrated when dictionaries did not offer the word he needed, and decided to build his own, with the goal of building the best in the world. This free online dictionary now boasts over 63,000 references and continues to grow.
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