As a former Spanish tutor one of the books that I always recommend to people who want to get started on learning Spanish is Arriba. Not only do I recommend this book to students but I also recommend it to many of my close friends who are Spanish teachers.
"¡Arriba! Comunicación y cultura is a highly flexible program–one that can be used effectively in a wide range of learning environments by students who learn in different ways" - Eduardo Zayas- Bazan (Author)
For a beginner’s course book Arriba does a very good job at providing topics and exercises for adult learners. Many times beginner level books have the tendency to direct their attention to younger students and it can be very evident when working with reading or grammar exercises. This is not the case with this book; in each chapter students will work on activities which will help them start speaking the language and use it in a real life context. The book aims at developing all four skills, but extra attention is placed on speaking and listening. While working on the 15 chapters students will go over a variety of topics such as introducing yourself, describing people, health, travelling, jobs/professions, and even politics. Each chapter is extremely detailed and many related topics are dealt with in each chapter. For example: Chapter one “Hola, que tal?” deals with introductions and greetings but a number of exercises which focus on proper pronunciation of vowels, days of the week, and making comparisons can also be found in this chapter. Since there is so much information to work on, every chapter ends with a chapter review activity which helps students go over all of the information they have worked on before moving on to the next chapter. I must mention that many of these activities cannot be done without the help of a teacher. Most of these exercises are actually role play activities which help students link the language skills they have learned to real life situations.
Even though each chapter comes with in-depth explanations and exercises, students will find even more practice activities at the end of the book. A Spanish-English and English-Spanish dictionary are also provided along with an extensive verb chart. What I enjoyed the most about this book is that even though it focuses on grammar and speaking activities there are a number of cultural notes, or as the book calls them “perfiles,” all throughout the book. These cultural notes provide the student with brief and interesting facts about various Spanish speaking countries. The book also comes with access to an online application known as “My Spanish Lab” where students have access to online support and extra activities.
Since the book covers a variety of topics and offers plenty of practice, I could even say that the book can help students prepare themselves for the pre-intermediate level. This book is not meant for independent learners since many of the activities require supervision or assistance from a teacher. I would highly recommend Arriba to teachers and students, especially students who have little or no knowledge of Spanish and want to get started on learning the language.
