Madrigal's Magic Key to Spanish (Paperback)

Madrigal's Magic key is trully "magical." The book simply is entertaining and a very easy read. It makes learning Spanish fun and not a chore. The book gets the student right into the language without all those complicated rules. The emphasis is on buidling your confidence and establishing a Spanish vocabulary quickly without pain. This is accomplished based on your knowledge of English. For example, she teaches you the tricks of converting english nouns into verbs. The result is that you're not memorizing verbs but focusing on applying simple rules to building a large spanish vocabulary quickly and maintain conmfidence.

The book would truly be outstanding if it combined more exercises (writing) with her "See It and Say it in Spanish" book which is great also.

This is not a book that you'll read and forget a! ! bout. The second and third time I read it increased my comprehension significantly. My ownly regret is that I found this book after spending alot of money on books that only frustrated me, were virtually useless and definitely too much like work.

As I first came across it on Amazon though, I was influenced by the consistently glowing reviews, rather than my own shallow prejudices.

One review here poses the question, why haven't other language teachers caught on to this method? I would say that Madrigal's approach is broadly similar to that used by Michel Thomas in his equally valuable cassette/CD based course. (If you're interested in that, I'd strongly recommend buying the full course and not just the 2hr introductory version). Both of them take the approach of introducing the language via cognates, which encourage you to feel that you know some Spanish already. It is a great way to engage the student who may be doubtful as to their own abilities to learn another language.

The other significant similarity is that they both passionately believe in the student actively "creating" the language for themselves, rather than learning things parrot fashion. The latter approach, as I can attest from my time at school, means that you are likely to retain very little of the language and even less of your enthusiasm to study it.

I've been amazed at how different the study of Spanish seems using these resources, compared with how things were during secondary education. Back in those dark days, it was all rote learning of vocab lists and endless verb conjugation drills. You still have to learn the structure of the language using Madrigal's book and/or Thomas' cassettes, but in both cases the process is fun - you're not introduced to the language in a dry manner, devoid of application. You find yourself doing something which is stimulating, creative and confidence-building. How different from that sense of banging one's head against a brick wall.

As I say, I'd highly recommend the Michel Thomas course. However, some people - myself being one of them - may be a little disconcerted with it being audio only and would appreciate a text to consolidate their learning. Madrigal's Magic key is excellent for that purpose.