Practice Makes Perfect: Complete Spanish Grammar, Premium Fourth Edition

Why it's worth it

This is the book for the intermediate learner who keeps dodging the subjunctive and guessing between ser and estar. Hundreds of exercises organized by concept let you attack exactly the weakness you have without wading through material you already know.

Plateaus almost always trace back to a handful of specific gaps. Preterite versus imperfect. Ser versus estar. The subjunctive you've been avoiding for a year. This book organizes its exercises by grammatical concept, so you can go straight to the chapter that fixes your problem instead of restarting from chapter one. That targeting is what makes it useful as a supplement rather than a full course.

Owners are clear about who it's for, and they're worth listening to. Several say outright that it assumes roughly a semester of Spanish behind you — start it cold and you'll struggle. Come to it with basic vocabulary and shaky grammar, though, and people describe steady, visible progress. That's a narrower audience than the marketing suggests, but a very well-served one.

From our review of 7 language learning workbooks, by Genevieve Dubois, Home & Living Expert

What we like

• +Plateaus almost always trace back to a handful of specific gaps
• +Owners are clear about who it's for, and they're worth listening to
• +The translation exercises are a quiet strength
• +The Premium Fourth Edition adds digital practice on top of the printed exercises

What to know

• –Grammar drills build accuracy, not fluency
• –It's a big, heavy book — this is a desk resource, not a commute one