This book is a short story for adult learners with a pre–intermediate level of Spanish (A2). Reading is one of the most effective and pleasant ways to learn a Foreign Language. By reading, students can learn vocabulary and grammar structures as part of a story, in context, without memorising lists of isolated words or studying endless grammar rules. However, La profe de español is not just a book to learn Spanish. It is also a good story. It is a funny, witty, enjoyable and engaging story. A story that will capture your attention from the beginning and, hopefully, will make you smile. It tells the story of María, a Spanish teacher who works in a really peculiar language school, where bizarre things happen. If you have ever been to a Spanish class, you will enjoy reading this book.
Juan Fernández is a Spanish teacher at University College London. He was born in the south of Spain, in Granada, one of the most beautiful cities in the world. In 1997 he moved to the UK, where he has been teaching Spanish for more than 15 years. He is also the creator of 1001 Reasons To Learn Spanish, a website with games, videos, podcasts and many activities to help you learn Spanish in a pleasant way.
How can one write such a small story, yet gripping, yet with simple words to help the beginners? This can easily be called a page-turner because of the way it was narrated. I could relate to this story (and many more beginners in Spanish too) because I too felt I was one of the students of Maria's class. It also introduces a plethora of words, phrases, vocabularies, vernacular that is used in everyday language which is hard to find in a dictionary or a different book that claims to learn Spanish by Reading. I also highly recommend the extra material in Juan's website that takes you to a small tour of the culture of Spain and the Spaniards. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and I am so crazy that I am buying all his books!
I enjoyed reading this book. There were words that i did not understand but they did not stop me from understanding the story. I felt that the use of the past tense enhanced my understanding of how to use and has given me some confidence in incorporating it into speech, which for me is the most difficult part! I would definitely recommend this book, as for me its the first spanish story i have read that i felt flowed, as if reading it in my native language.......as any enjoyable story should. For me it was pitched at just the right place and i felt very pleased with myself after i finished reading it! That in itself was a welcome change from the frustrations of........will i ever learn this language!
An enjoyable story for someone learning Spanish. I've read a few of these graded readers. This one at the A2 level (which for me is advanced beginner) would be difficult if you have just started studying Spanish as Fernandez constructs his stories to offer some challenge in terms of grammar and vocabulary. The chapters are short and followed by a vocabulary list of highlighted words in the story. If you are a Kindle, or Kindle app, user I highly recommend this story as you have access to the Spanish- English dictionary which enhances the reading experience.
The downside as others have pointed out is the story short of ends without some questions being resolved.
There's not much of a story and what there is isn't resolved quite enough. Nothing "bizarre" happens--it's basically a day in the life at a Spanish language school. But it's still pretty interesting (even though there's a scene where they are sitting around discussing grammar in a classroom!) and it includes helpful conversational phrases. It's clearly written and the comprehension questions are clear and simple. These are the only graded readers I've come across that are written by a native speaker, so that's nice. And his website (1001 Reasons to Learn Spanish) seems like it will be helpful.
I am a third of a way through my second year of Spanish lessons (which will see me attain A2 level) and overall I think this book was not quite as challenging as I wanted it to be. While it was very satisfying to be able to read very quickly and grasp the concept, I understood about 90% of the content so I didn’t pick up that many new words/phrases. However, for a book aimed at learners the storyline was quite interesting and I did enjoy the book.
La profe de español es una lectura graduada muy divertida y graciosa. La prefiero mucho más que las otras que he leído.
Trata de una clase de español en Granada. Los estudiantes de la clase hablan inglés y han viajado a España para aprender español. Cada estudiante tiene su propio motivo. Rose quiere conseguir una certificación y quiere estudiar mucha gramática y vocabulario. Charles sólo quiere pasarse bien. Típicamente sale de marcha cada fin de semana, hablando inglés con otros estudiantes. Él no ha aprendido mucho.
Una mañana, María, la profe, no llega a clase. Es un misterio. El director de la escuela dice al recepcionista que él tiene que enseñar la clase. No es un buen profesor. Los estudiantes están muy confusos. Después de la clase, los estudiantes hablan de su profesora y donde estará.
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I didn't know a graded reader could be so funny. I loved all the students arguing about Spanish grammar, each student's different motivation for studying in Spain, and especially .
I have mixed feelings about the bolded vocabulary terms in each section, because I felt they took me out of the story a bit, but they were helpful. I liked that the translations came after each chapter instead of before, since that gave me a chance to guess the meaning from context and then see if I was right.
I wasn't sure what to make of the author's warning at the begining (one of the few parts of the book in English), that humor "can be difficult to understand with all its nuances in a foreign language. In fact, previous readers of this book got really confused about the story. It seems they didn't get the jokes and didn´t understand the end." I honestly thought it was probably a joke, but I see in many Goodreads and Amazon reviews that in fact people did not get the end, many even saying that we never find out where the teacher María went. In case anyone is interested, here is my interpretation:
The group of characters in La Profe de Español is made up of a mix of weirdos. It seems like the almost only sane person is "la profe" but she went missing and left her students behind. The rest of the professors including the school's director are mainly disgruntled misfits. In the end, the mismanaged school loses students as well as the only other good teacher. This book is an amusing short story that includes a good mix of Spanish expressions used in an informal way of speaking. This includes abusive and rude wording that one probably should not ever use but one still needs to understand what they mean. The ending is somewhat uninspiring but with a little imagination, the reader can guess what happened. La profe might just help you make another step forward on your Spanish learning journey :)
I have bought several books on Kindle and audio books on Audible over last two years I have finished one book yet. Either book were way over my learning level or story wasnt all that interesting. This book was fantastic cover to cover. I could relate to the story because its about students in language school. The story was easy to understand and the author give you right amount of new vocabulary without making feel like you need to hit translate ever other word. I give this book 5 stars .Do you self favor read this book because it give the confidence you can read in spanish .
A fun read, and a great way to enjoy learning Spanish. It's carefully designed to have an appropriate level of words. I'm really a beginning Spanish learner and it was probably a little high level for me but it still was great to have this "wow, I'm actually reading Spanish" feeling.
The story is fun, the characters are all a bit off-beat and there's a lot of dry humor. As you get into the book you want to read more just to find out what's going on. Or to put it another way, you aren't reading the book to learn Spanish, you're reading the book to enjoy the story, and as a by-product you are improving your Spanish.
Engaging, humorous story in advanced-beginner level Spaniah.
Juan Fernandez, the energetic, amazing Spanish language teacher, has created podcasts, YouTube videos, language review and learning courses, and this very helpful series of books designed to engage Spanish language students and enrich their Spanish. I’m happy to have found them. In college, I read Cien Años de Soledad in Spanish. I certainly can’t do that now. But with Juan’s help, poco a poco, I just might be able to re-read Gabriel García Marquez’s famous work someday—and be able to discuss it!
Did i miss something? The story just ended with no resolve? Where did the teacher go? Where did the class go? I am so confused because I thought i comprehended the story quite well.
Not as good as the first two books, as this one focused on many characters and jumped around a bit rather than having one main character to connect with.
It’s great how each book increases in level slightly and slowly introduces you to new grammar and tenses.
Overall, this one was a disappointing story but the series is still the best one out there for learning to read Spanish!
This book is easy to read and very well structured. Each chapter is short and interesting with an immediate supportive vocabulary section. The quiz questions for each chapter ensure good understanding and each resume is a further check that the main points have been understood☺😊😀👑👑👑👑👑
It’s been several years since I seriously studied Spanish and this book was a great way to ease back into the language. The story is funny and it predominantly uses the easier tenses, present, past and imperfect past, but also has some conditional verb usage. Would recommend as a way to kick start your studies again.
en realidad no hay ninguna historia en este libro, me parece que este libro era sobre gente hablando de cosas al azar. no hay ninguna historia en este libro, así que, fue un poco aburrido.
al otro lado, como siempre, este libro fue muy bueno para aprender cosas.
mi consejo es: debería leer "un hombre fascinante" de Juan Fernandez, no este libro.
Mientras este libro está estructurado como los otros libros de Juan, la historia es un poco repetitiva y hay algunas frases de sus otros libros 'el hombre fascinante' y 'año nuevo' que se reutilizan. Yo sé que la repetición es buena para aprender, así que quizás no es problema. Todavía recomendaría este libro para mejorar el español.
I really enjoyed the story and reading it in Spanish. It is relatively easy to read and understand, and very entertaining. I learnt a few new phrases, especially me encanta "que guay"
Normally I get easily bored in reading anything written in Spanish alone but without much frustration I was able to keep on reading it until to the end. I feel my Spanish has been getting better by simply reading the book more than once.
Maybe I received a bad download, because the story just abruptly ended with no conclusion or explanations for anything. Based on what I read, I wouldn't even call it a story. Weird!
Fun book! This is my first time reading a graded reader outside of classes, and I found this book to be entertaining! It also boosted my confidence and assurance in my level as the grammar & vocabulary was easy for me to follow so I might try a B1 book soon!
Actually enjoyed the book! My y more interesting then other books intended to learn Spanish. This one actually engaging and really liked the fact that Spanish from Spain is used with all it’s slangs.
Este libro es mi segundo libro de español que he leído, y aunque no es tan bueno que el otro, todavía está un buen método para aprender español. Me parece la historia un poco más sencillo, como es una historia de un libro de academia. Pero, el punto es aprender, entonces, por eso es un buen libro.