BEGINNING SPANISH.

By Francisco Ugarte.New York: Odyssey Press, 1955. 233 pp.$2.40.

In his Beginning Spanish Professor Ugarte has incorporated fruits of his experience in teaching his native language to students in this country. Since these young people are a typical cross-section of the young Americans who frequently begin or re-begin a language in college after some kind of a start in the linguistic field in secondary school, Professor Ugarte has been able to judge in his years among us how our students respond to various approaches.

A typical lesson of the twenty into which Beginning Spanish is divided has a good, full vocabulary at the very outset and two or three interesting and informative pages on some aspect of Spanish, Spanish-American or North American life or history in clear, narrative or conversational Spanish. A moderate amount of grammatical explanation follows, with Spanish examples to illustrate the point. Professor Ugarte very wisely has limited this section to essentials, avoiding confusing the student with excessive comment or lists of exceptions. A section entitled "Read Aloud" in everyday Spanish gives the student an opportunity in the exercises which follow to base his answers on idiomatic Spanish models.

Professor Ugarte's book is no silver spoon for the mouth of the loafer or the dawdler. All students will find plenty of lively, interesting material on which to exercise their mental, as well as jaw, muscles. The spoken language is stressed through the informative section and the "Read Aloud" section in Spanish and exercises in which the student answers questions. The twenty lessons are easily divisible according to the speed at which the instructor may wish to proceed.

It is always dangerous to predict the success of a grammar until it has been tried out by the individual teacher - beaten, so to speak, on the teacher's private anvil, his own class. Beginning Spanish is good metal.