Tune Up Your Spanish: Top 10 Ways to Improve Your Spoken Spanish

by Mary McVey Gill, Brenda Wegmann

Readers can tune up their conversation skills with Tune Up guides--the next best thing to a year abroad! Getting beyond sounding like a beginner is more than just a matter of learning more vocabulary and grammar. It's also about understanding the culture and developing the right mind set for thinking, listening, and talking like a native. The next best thing to a year abroad, the books in this exciting new series offer language learners an entertaining and practical way to hone their foreign-language conversation skills. Tune Up books are structured around 10 key areas for improvement, covering everything from tricky grammatical structures to gestures, slang, and humor. In each area, key phrases are presented in "Top Ten" lists, including everyday expressions for filling pauses, icebreakers, and more. An excellent brushup for learners returning to a language they studied in high school or college, Tune Up books

Genres: Reference

Paperback

First published August 1, 2009

Reviews

[Andrea · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a really fun and helpful Spanish book- surprisingly enough, it's kind of a page turner.

[Miki Jacobs · Rating 5 out of 5]

I brought this book several years ago and it had sat on the shelf. Lockdown meant that I picked it up and wow - I loved this book. It had 10 chapters each dealing with a different aspect of Spanish and Latin culture. Each chapter starts with a list of 10 things that you will discover in the chapter. I've just been talking to a friend who has lived in Spain for many years and she said she didn't know some of them, so she was impressed.
Apart from explaining the difference in the various words for you and some explanation about pronouncation around the world, it doesn't get caught up with grammar as it assumes that the reader already knows some Spanish.
If you've been studying Spanish and are fed up with grammar drills, then this is the book for you.

[Laura Gilfillan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Finally finished! This book had a wealth of information about culture, idioms and expressions, how to converse, and many other pointers for spoken Spanish. It was a lot to take in, and I'll probably have to have another go at this book again some time. It took me awhile to get through it (especially since it's a library book, and they wanted it back while I was still in the middle of it), but it was a worthwhile read.

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a unique Spanish textbook for people who already speak Spanish, but could use some hints on everyday usage and elucidations of the distinctions between similar phrases. It describes nuances of expressions that will, as advertised, "tune up" your Spanish, and is good at listing regional differences, which is especially helpful when you're speaking Spanish in a place like the US, where there you meet people from all over. The style of the first half is especially interesting, and makes it almost, as another reviewer put it, a "page turner", but it is useful throughout, even when it gets a bit bogged down in lists.

[Alayne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very nice book - informative and it has helped me to improve my Spanish

[lemoney snicket · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this book. it is an easy way to learn spanish