First Spanish Reader

Delightful stories, other material based on works of Don Juan Manuel, Luis Taboada, Ricardo Palma, other noted writers. Complete faithful English translations on facing pages. Exercises.

Geared toward advanced beginners, these highlights from poetry, plays, and stories by noted Spanish-language writers include works by Gabriela Mistral, Pedro Calderón de la Barca, and Lope de Vega.

There are simple and funny Spanish texts for easy reading. The book consists of Beginner and Elementary courses with parallel Spanish-English texts. The author maintains learners' motivation by funny stories about real life situations such as meeting people, studying, job searches, working etc. The ALARM Method (Approved Learning Automatic Remembering Method) utilize natural human ability to remember words used in texts repeatedly and systematically. The author managed to compose each sentence using only words explained in previous chapters. The second and the following chapters of the Beginner course have only about thirty new words each. The book is equipped with the audio tracks. The address of the home page of the book on the Internet, where audio files are available for listening and downloading, is listed at the beginning of the book on the copyright page.

Beginning students of Italian language and literature will welcome these selections of poetry, fiction, history, and philosophy by 14th- to 20th-century authors, including Dante, Boccaccio, Pirandello, and 52 others.

Specially chosen for their power to evoke German life and culture, these short, simple readings include poems, stories, essays, and anecdotes by Goethe, Hesse, Heine, Schiller, and others.