This is a great book explaining things. Good for a beginner but maybe easier for intermediate study.

I don't think I will ever find a better book on learning a language in my life.

The author here basically hacked the language, no really this is so impressive the original author should get a Nobel prize in the first five chapters you learn how to be able to take a massive amount of the English words that you know and use specific rules to modify them into Spanish.

So instead of spending an hour a day memorizing 20 new words like I had to for Filipino and French.

You memorize these rules so you can convert the words. Memories a few basic pronouns. articles, conjunctions then spend an hour writing out sentences.

In one week of using this book I am at the same point that my Filipino was after 2 years of on and off study with 4 months of 4 hour a day intense study and 100 hours of lessons from a graduate student.

Maybe my example is extreme, also Tagalog(filipino) itself has a lot of Spanish words and so does french, its also possible that I was dumb when I studied Tagalog because I was not used to learning a new language. But please buy the book I hope I find other books like this for other languages, I still can't believe such a thing exists.

Although this book was written in the 1950s and is a bit dated, it still does a great job of teaching Spanish. I've seen a fair number of such textbooks, and this one is honestly my favorite. I recommend!

This is a great book.

It’s simply written and easier to understand. Quite a comprehensive book for augmenting vocabulary in Spanish which makes learning faster.

As an example, I bought it after I read reviews and I am not disappointed. I started from the basics With this book and when I was three quarters of the way, what I learned from this book placed me in intermediate level. But, now I am learning advanced SPANISH I am still finding the tips in the book useful.

Can’t say enough good things about this book.

Ps: to learn any language you must be super committed and willing to sound ridiculous (humble). No book can teach those traits so, please bear that with my comment.

Have fun and enjoy the journey.

This book helped me the most out of any other Spanish textbooks. Highly recommend

Excellent book! I would recommend it to anyone. I am very impressed by everything I have learned and HOW MUCH I have learned with the book. The book is very easy to understand and pleasant to go through. It's great if you are just starting to learn or want to improve your Spanish and review some things.

Even though my mother tongue is French and there is a significant part at the beginning of the book especially, where there is an emphasis on the similarity between English and Spanish, I could easily find what that similarity would be in French. The progression from lesson to lesson is perfect.

The sentence making exercice and translation from English to Spanish together are really good practices. They help really well with knowing where the different words in the sentence go, if example a specific proposition is needed that you wouldn't know. As you go through the book you will remember pretty well what you have learned.

Quite a bit packed in to these pages, perhaps too much ‘repetition’ and examples, making this a very thick and heavy book, which you won’t be taking with you anywhere, other than for home use. Somewhat clumsy as to how the lessons are laid out too. You can do better.

This is a great learning tool to help aide in the Spanish learning process. It has lots of important information to gain the extra knowledge we all need in advancing with understanding Spanish.

Very nice

This book is based on identifying patterns to give you, the learner, the fastest possible entry point into actually usable Spanish:

- how to convert thousands of English words to Spanish equivalents

- how to conjugate verbs in past, present and future - crucially, without trying to kill your enthusiasm with horrendous grammar tables

Conjugations are introduced slowly, so the learner is not faced with table after table of conjugations in all forms. (After all, we didn't learn English by learning grammar first, we learnt it by identifying patterns and then, when we were at school, we learnt grammatical terms and nuances.) In fact, the learner is introduced to the singular forms of only the first person and third person for a good portion of the book.

The learner is introduced to the past tense first, in order that useful expressions can be made from the word go. This is on the grounds that a lot of our conversations in daily life are about the past: what we did at the weekend, last week, last night or this morning, for example.

Everything that is introduced is followed by more than ample opportunity to practice: there are sentences to read and word/phrase combination drills to perform. One reviewer has said that the book is too long but I would temper that view with the knowledge that the increase in volume is actually due to these many examples of usage and word/phrase combination drills. In fact, I have found other resources far too brief in this regard.

I am no language savant (a fact, sadly, not false modesty), but I am a linguistic enthusiast and, having sought out, and used, beginner level materials for Russian, Japanese, Italian, Greek and Amharic and having taken French (A level) and German (O level) at school/college (a long, long time ago :-D), I can say that this book is better at getting the learner up and running with usable language than any other book or online resource that I have found to date, by a country mile. With most others, I have found that there is far too much unnecessary grammar introduced far too early to engage the learner and provide opportunities to succeed in reproducing and reusing the language learnt.

Some reviewers have pointed to the South American bias of this book as being a problem for anyone wishing to speak Spanish in mainland Spain but I have found no such issues in the dozen or so times that I have visited Spain. (The odd person has tried to correct my "gracias" to "grathias" but, after a bit of interaction, they have realised that I am not being lazy or uneducated but, rather, speaking the South American flavour - and they can understand it perfectly well. And let's not forget that the vast majority of people will try hard to understand a foreigner that tries to use their language - and never underestimate the power of always using "please" and "thankyou" and, indeed, pointing and saying the appropriate numbers with a hopeful smile :-D … We even have significant differences British English: I was brought up in southern England and have worked in Sheffield recently and whilst I would “make a brew”, they will “mash”, I will feel “cold” but they will be “nesh”, something might be “dirty” but to them it will be “mardy” … Differences are easily overcome with very little effort and, really, should just add to our enjoyment of the vibrant nature of language.)

As with all language learning resources, the effort exerted by the learner is the actual key to learning a foreign language to whatever level the learner feels that they want to achieve, but Madrigals Magic Keys To Spanish is an excellent starting point and gives a great deal of potential for quickly usable language from which the learner can then spring and delve into other resources and learning opportunities.

I am about 85% of the way through Madrigal's Magic Key and have to say that I am very impressed with Madrigal's approach. Her approach is different from the conventional lesson plans with which I have been familiar since language training in high school. One person posted the comment that it matters HOW one learns and perhaps Madrigal's approach isn't the right approach for everyone, but it is certainly the right approach for me. A number of years ago I tried to learn Spanish using, "Spanish Made Simple". Essentially, I got nowhere. This time around, using Madrigal, I'm making very rapid progress. Another person commented that the best thing about Madrigal's approach is that it engenders confidence. This is totally true. Her teaching approach is brilliant, really. She starts off by showing the student all the Spanish words that he already knows and quickly builds other basic language skills on that starting foundation. From there, she presents lessons in terms of basic "blocks" of concept areas in ascending order of difficulty. Interestingly, one of the first starting concepts is how to use past tense. After that she presents the next big "block" (most common) verb forms; the "ar", "er" and "ir" verb groups. I can't say enough good things about this approach. It serves to give the student a basic orientation to major concept areas very quickly starting with the easiest to understand concept areas first.

This works very well for me. The usual language approach is to start with "useful phrases". This invariably turns out to be useless for me because providing me with details that I cannot assemble into anything bigger is just totally confusing. I need the opposite approach. Give me the "big picture", then show me how to break it down into smaller useable bits, and then I'm off and running. The details can be ground finer and finer as necessary.

Another thing in Madrigal's text which makes perfect sense is that she saves discussion of familiar forms of address until the last lesson. I can remember being confused early on in my high school French class because of the "need" to learn the familiar (It also added unnecessary complexity to my German language studies). But think about this just one minute. One only needs to use the familiar form of address with family and close friends. If one lives in an environment where there are significant numbers of Spanish speaking family members and intimate friends with whom one needs to communicate, then how is it remotely possible that one doesn't already know how to speak Spanish!!! Obviously, for the non-native speaker, the familiar form of address can safely be left for the last lesson.

In an earlier edition of this review I mentioned a couple of criticisms which, as I have progressed through my "Madrigal course work", have proven unfounded. Margarita's lesson plan is idiosyncratic and would benefit from an appendix with a little bit more detail to help the student to better navigate questions as they arise. I recommend the Mirriam-Webster Spanish/English dictionary as a basic study aid. Additionally, I have found very helpful the guide to conjugating the 254 most often used Spanish verbs, and 501 Spanish Verbs is another text worth considering. These books are very useful because the Madrigal Method approaches teaching the verb forms piecemeal and, depending upon the student, he or she may be better served if he can just forge ahead with some of the conjugations.

I highly recommend Madrigal's Magic Key as the cornerstone of a beginning Spanish course with the understanding that at some point, one will need to add additional course materials.

Very good book to learn spanish grammar.

Great book! Super easy and user friendly way to learn Spanish. Starts with showing you what you already know, but didn’t think you did. Highly recommend for beginners