This is the newly updated SECOND EDITION!

This version has been fully re-checked for accuracy and re-formatted to make it even more user-friendly, following feedback after a full year of classroom use by thousands of teachers across the world. Spanish Sentence Builders is a workbook aimed at beginner to pre-intermediate students co-authored by two modern languages educators with over 40 years of extensive classroom experience between the two, both in the UK and internationally.

This ‘no-frills’ book contains 19 units of work on very popular themes, jam-packed with graded vocabulary-building, reading, translation, retrieval practice and writing activities. Key vocabulary, lexical patterns and structures are recycled and interleaved throughout.

Each unit includes:
1) A sentence builder modelling the target constructions;
2) A set of vocabulary building activities;
3) A set of narrow reading texts exploited through a range of tasks focusing on both the meaning and structural levels of the text;
4) A set of retrieval-practice translation tasks;
5) A set of writing tasks targeting essential micro-skills such as spelling, lexical retrieval, syntax, editing and communication of meaning.

Based on the Extensive Processing Instruction (E.P.I.) principle that learners learn best from comprehensible and highly patterned input flooded with the target linguistic features, the authors have carefully designed each and every text and activity to enable the student to process and produce each item many times over.
This occurs throughout each unit of work as well as in smaller grammar, vocabulary and question-skills micro-units located at regular intervals in the book, which aim at reinforcing the understanding and retention of the target grammar, vocabulary and question patterns.

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It can be used to introduce the target verbs and associated grammar and lexicogrammar patterns to absolute beginners. It can also be useful if you teach lower-to-intermediate learners (years 9 to 11 in the U.K.) in order to consolidate, expand and deepen their mastery of those verbs and patterns. The latter learners, in our experience, are often able to master verb formation, but lack depth of knowledge, i.e. knowledge of verb collocations (which lexis the verbs partner with) and colligations (the rules which bind the verbs with what comes before and after them in a sentence).

Each macro-unit starts ‘small’ with the target verb being learnt within very basic sentence patterns and in the first person only. As each unit progresses the target verbs are modelled in sentence patterns which gradually increase in length and complexity. In order to enhance transferrability of learning and lexical depth, each verb is also practised with a variety of lexical sets. For instance, the verb Tener is practised with animals, classroom objects, clothes, physical description, emotional and physical states, age, etc.

Traditional grammar and lexicogrammar intersect throughout the whole book, as, in order for the learners to be able to become creative with each sentence pattern, they must also master the manipulation of the changeable items in each sentence such as verbs, adjectives, pronouns determiners, etc. The teaching of grammar arises organically from the need to enhance the generative power of each target sentence pattern – this is a major innovation of this book.

The book is very mindful of cognitive load. Hence, each instructional sequence gradually increases the cognitive challenge, with receptive activities in the initial section of each sub-unit paving the way for the productive ones located at the end and with each task priming the next. It goes without saying that the repeated processing and the constant recycling also makes it easier for the content to become effortlessly entrenched.

How can one supplement this book to enhance its impact?
Please note that this book is best used in synergy with language-gym.com and sentencebuilders.com. Both websites feature self-marking games and activities based on its content.

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