"A Complete Guide to Learning Latin American Spanish" by Juan Kattan-Ibarra is a comprehensive and accessible resource designed for beginners seeking to master the fundamentals of Latin American Spanish. The book provides a solid foundation in language learning with a clear and structured approach, making it a valuable tool for new learners.

The book starts with essential tools for language acquisition, including pronunciation guides, grammar basics, and an overview of the Spanish alphabet. These introductory sections lay the groundwork for effective learning and ensure that readers can build their skills progressively. The inclusion of a tracker allows learners to monitor their progress at their own pace, which is particularly useful for maintaining motivation and measuring improvement.

One of the standout features of this guide is its focus on regional differences within Latin American Spanish. This is especially beneficial for learners who have traveled or plan to travel in Central or South America, as it provides context for the variations they may encounter. The book’s detailed explanations of these regional nuances help bridge the gap between theory and practical usage, enhancing the learning experience.

The book also offers a free online audio accompaniment, which supports pronunciation and listening comprehension—crucial elements for mastering any language. While the digital review copy lacked this audio component, it is evident that the audio resource would be a valuable addition to the learning process.

Despite its strengths, the book is primarily aimed at beginners, and those seeking advanced grammar or more in-depth linguistic analysis might find it less comprehensive. However, for its intended audience, it strikes an excellent balance between practical language use and foundational learning.

In summary, "A Complete Guide to Learning Latin American Spanish" is an excellent starting point for anyone looking to learn Latin American Spanish. Its clear explanations, practical tools, and focus on regional variations make it a useful resource for beginners. The engaging format and support materials help to make the learning process enjoyable and effective.

Just brilliant! I started learning Spanish on an app 6 months ago. The app is American and so it is teaching Latin American Spanish, and it does have a place in my learning journey, however there is very little foundation.

This book has completely closed that gap and made everything make far more sense. Before getting stuck in fully, the book teaches tools to help with learning a language, explains pronunciation, grammar and the alphabet and provides a tracker to help monitor your learning, which you can do completely at your own pace and with the support of the free audio accompaniment available online. All the foundations to support you and help to make your learning successful.

One of the standouts for me was the explanation of regional differences in the language, as we have travelled in some of Central America and plan to return, as well as travelling extensively in South America in the future.

5 ⭐️ Thanks to Netgalley, Juan Kattan-Ibarra and Nicolas Brealey for an ARC in return for an honest review.

This workbook would be a good starting place for a small group or someone wanting to dip into Spanish. There appears to be an audio track (which was not part of my review copy), which would be very necessary for pronunciation and training the ear.

Beginning with how to pronounce the letters of the alphabet and continuing with chapters based on situations a traveler might find himself in, the book focuses more remembering words and phrases, with little explanation of grammar. For instance, the entire section on reflexive verbs (which are much more common in Spanish than in English) only gets half a page, without being named as reflexive verbs.

For a student who wants to become fluent, or at least semi-fluent, I feel a grounding in grammar is key. While I appreciate the Latin American focus of this workbook, the lack of grammar practice and explanation makes it less appealing for me.

Thank you Netgalley and the publisher for an early copy of this book in exchange for a review! This book was very informative and easy to follow (despite not using the audio version). I enjoyed using it but found it a little challenging as a very very beginner learner due to the formatting of the ebook,

This is a great study guide for anyone who is learning or wants to learn how to speak Latin American Spanish.

There is an audio which accompanies this course, it is quite helpful.

Learn numbers, the alphabet, how to pronounce words, and much, much more useful stuff.

Quotable Quotes: "Write messages or postcards in Spanish." This will help you to retain and remember the Spanish words.

Highly recommend.

I am thankful for the complimentary copy, I was not obligated to post a review.

#beginnersLatinAmericanSpanish #ForeignLanguageLearning #QuotableQuotes #NicholasBrealeyUS #teachyourself #nonfiction #multicultural #JuanKattanIbarra #netgalley

Even though I only had book to review, not the audio, I’m glad I had the chance to read this very helpful and well laid out language tutoring book. I’ve been using Duolingo, but it has many draw backs. This books fills in the gaps with explanations of Spanish words and grammar in Latin American countries that has improved my knowledge and enjoyment of learning Latin American Spanish. Thank you to Nicholas Brealey US and NetGalley for the ARC. The views expressed are all mine, freely given.

This ended up being more beginner than I needed, but would be great for a very new spanish learner! It is also difficult to rate because of the unfinished formatting because I think layout plays a big role in the accessibility/comprehension.

While this is below my Spanish level, it looks like a great workbook with a variety of activities that help with listening comprehension and pronunciation, as well as just writing and reading. I would be interested in having a more advanced version.

I think this is a great book for beginners. As someone who is brushing up on their Spanish, I appreciated the way this book was organized and how it really covers everything down to the basic fundamentals. I think I would definitely prefer a paper copy so I could utilize the progress tracker, but this is a book I will refer to in days to come as I continually try to learn Spanish.

This obviously isn't a complete guide but I liked this for what it was. Readers are introduced to several words and some grammar, along with helpful tips, and then you get to use all of it together. It's practical and helpful for things you might actually want to communicate.
Thanks to NetGalley for letting me read this

It may very well be because I was reading a digital review copy made available thanks to NetGalley, but the formatting made it almost impossible to read or get the full benefit from this book. There were multiple instances where text overlapped or cut off and then continued pages later with other text in between. There were numerous font changes for no apparent reason that also made it difficult to follow. It looked like it had been cut and paste together from at least a dozen different documents that were not all created in the same program. The formatting was so distracting that I almost gave up on the book.

This book relies upon the reader using accompany audio, but that was not available to me. Even recognizing this was a DRC, any book that requires audio is problematic because used copies almost never include the audio, and digital copies often don't.

The primary serious substantive problem related to pronunciation. The description of how to pronounce vowels in Spanish gave examples in English that were incorrect. Vowel sounds are the foundation of Spanish pronunciation, so this made me skeptical of whether I could trust the rest of what I was learning.

That being said, the study tips and learning techniques offered at the beginning of the book were very helpful. There was also a variety of vocabulary offered in a manner that was more natural for learning than the approach found in many books.

This is a very well written guide to Latin American Spanish. Latin American Spanish is impressive and complex, and therefore may be daunting as a language to learn. However, Juan Kattan-Ibarra provides a skilful step-by-step process as to how to improve one's knowledge of the book.

The way the book is set out is helpful and easy to navigate. Importantly, there is no over-use of complex language so that the beginner can start their work without the concern of having to decode the instructions first.