****** - Verified Buyer
4.5
This is a truly excellent upper-level college textbook on Spanish grammar and composition. It is probably most useful for Spanish students at the high intermediate or above (B2+) level.Although intended to teach Spanish composition, roughly 85% of the book (or 5 out of the 6 lessons in each chapter) is devoted to a thorough exposition of Spanish grammar. It is here that the book really shines, as the explanations of grammar points are as clear and intuitive as any I have seen. If you want to understand how the Spanish language really works rather than just memorize a bunch of rules, and if you aren't afraid to do some real work and use your brain a bit, then this may be the book for you. Simply stated, it is a profoundly conceived and beautifully executed book.For those with any interest in Spanish linguistics, coauthor Whitley's "Spanish/English Contrasts" is also a superb book full of insights about the Spanish language.(For those that own the second edition of the book, the main differences in the third edition are some formatting changes (use of color, boxes,etc.) that do seem to make the book a little easier to read. The few substantive changes [different essay examples, some very minor changes in treatment of grammar points, a new and more global explanation of the various uses of the "se" forms of verbs] are not particularly significant in my opinion, and if you own the second edition you already have 99+% of the grammar content in the third edition.)
