First published in 1997, Breaking the Spanish Barrier has helped students achieve their language goals through a clear, structured approach.
Each level delivers essential vocabulary, core grammar, and cultural content in a complete, year-long Spanish course. The program is designed to stand alone, with everything needed for a full academic year.
Thoughtful exercises, a recurring audio adventure series, authentic native-speaker audio recordings, vocabulary quizzes, cultural articles, and a comprehensive test program support students throughout the series. By the end, students will have practiced all major Spanish topics.
Online Access offers:
- Audio, video, and interactive exercises (12 unique exercise formats)
- Cultural articles featuring notable people and landmarks from Spanish-speaking countries
- Instant feedback for exercises with corrections for incorrect answers
- Responsive flashcards with audio to reinforce vocabulary
- Oral questions and video instructional capsules
Spanish Level 1/Beginner
The Level 1 book assumes no prior knowledge of Spanish. It starts from the very beginning by introducing simple words and phrases that can be used right away.
The "First Steps" lesson also presents all the sounds of the Spanish language so that students can develop an authentic accent. Theme-based vocabulary offers students opportunities to learn words relevant to their daily lives at home, school, and beyond.
An action-packed dialogue series appears throughout the book offering students reading and listening comprehension practice.
Throughout the chapters, easy-to-understand explanations unravel these essential building blocks of language:
- nouns, pronouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs, conjunctions, and prepositions
- the present, preterite, imperfect, and progressive tenses
- formal commands
Spanish Level 2/Intermediate
The Level 2 text first reviews key grammar topics to ensure that all students have a strong grounding in the present, preterite, and imperfect tenses.
- New lists of vocabulary further expand students' ability to describe the world around them.
- An adventure series also is featured in Level 2 as characters travel to exciting new places with unexpected twists and turns.
- Written in the same student-friendly style as Level 1, the new material in Level 2 includes the following grammatical concepts:
- the future, conditional, present perfect, pluperfect, present subjunctive, and pluperfect subjunctive
- indefinites, demonstratives, and reflexive pronouns
- informal commands, comparisons
Spanish Level 3/Advanced
The Level 3/Advanced book targets students in their 3rd or 4th year of Spanish. It is a text that highlights all the key grammar found on AP, SAT II, IB, or college placement tests. In fact, author John Conner used to help write the AP tests!
Continuing the strategies established in the first two books in the series, the Advanced Level begins by reviewing the major present, past, conditional and future tenses. Cultural articles with comprehension exercises help students get to know stories from people around the world. You will also find:
- all perfect tenses, including the present perfect, pluperfect, future perfect and conditional perfect
- the subjunctive mood (with commands, verbs of emotion, hypothetical situations, adverbial phrases)
- comparatives, the passive voice, "if clauses," punctuation, and uses of the infinitive
- intriguing vocabulary, with special focus on adjectives in early chapters, followed by nouns, verbs, and idiomatic expressions
The Advanced level ensures students master the full range of Spanish language rules, preparing them for a lifetime of meaningful engagement with the Spanish-speaking world.