spanish-language reference

I've taken all kinds of foreign language classes to no avail. I used to be convinced that I'm just foreign-language stupid, doomed to be mono-lingual for the rest of my life.

After reading the glowing customer reviews here at amazon for Madrigal's Magic Key, I decided to take a chance on it.

I'm not too far into the book yet - I'm still on "leccion numero cinco" - but I'm already speaking Spanish with confidence. My Cuban-American boyfriend helps me with my pronounciation and tests me on my vocabulary. We are already having simple, short conversations entirely in Espanol - after only five lessons!

I bought this book along with Madrigal's "See It and Say It in Spanish" and find they complement each other very well. I actually use the Reminder Cards from Magic Key, and I do all the sentence-forming exercises and translations; combined with writing down the vocabulary from "See It and Say It" and posting the words around my house to read and remember at random as I go about my day to day life, I'm picking things up very quickly, and my boyfriend is highly impressed with my Espanol! Ms Madrigal has made it so that you are creating Spanish words and sentences on your own from the very first lesson, building up your confidence and making it all seem so easy and fun.

I've used many different books to learn Spanish, and found that Margarita Madrigal really is the easiest. Instead of immediatly teaching us to memorize verb conjugation, she starts out with a commom ground. What do I mean? Well, from the very first chapter she shows us that we know many spanish words already. For example, Here are some spanish words that every English-speaking person knows....popular, capital, animal, hotel, radio, conductor, cable, actor, ideal, fexible, central. Is that incredible or what? Margarita goes on to show us other words that we can easily recognize, such as optimista, dentista, artista,importante and presidente. All of these are very easy words to recognize and use. Of course this does not mean that her book is shallow or too easy. As you continue on in her book, you will see very detailed explanations and verb conjugations. This publication has been extensively used in many missionary homes by Jehovah's Witnesses, to enable these missionaries to really communicate with and understand Spanish-speaking people in all of Latin America. This book is a must for anyone who truly wants to learn Spanish the way it is spoken.

I found this book by chance in a bookstore in Berkely California 12 years ago. At the time I had only taken 3 years of Spanish in high school. My spanish took off after studying this book and most people now think I am a native speaker of Spanish. I think this book boosts your confidence from the start by showing you all the Spanish that you already know (the conjugates) and by teaching you the past rather than the future first. I highly recommend it. Also remember to practice at every opportunity! Speaking a new language is like learning to dance. You feel silly at first and will make mistakes. But with practice you will become more confident and you will experience the joy of communicating with others in this beautiful language.