einzelne wrote:There is a series Gramática de Uso del Español by Luís Aragonés.
PS. Moreover, this series is also available in English from McGraw-Hill Education.
Yes, it's the only famous one similar to the CLE books. Theres's also
Anaya en:
https://www.anayaele.es/anaya-ele-en And there are some books from enclave ELE, but I haven't seen these, because they're all for beginners. This publisher seems to have teamed up with CLE to produce similar textbooks for Spanish, which is a pity, because they have a lot of books with bad reviews. They're certainly not among the best publishers. However, these books might be good.
https://enclave-ele.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=291&Itemid=278I agree that
Uso is worth having a look at. But in my opinion it's not outstandingly good and it's huge (difficult to handle). The instruction part is well-done, but the explanations are quite long, not schematic (as opposed to
Progressive). This might be an advantage for beginner learners, but for me it's a disadvantage. It's not in proportion with the few exercises that are always based on sentences, never on texts. The exercises are rather poor, and they don't really help to retain things. Moreover, I don't feel that it wants to help me in any other way than grammar.
Progressive also improves vocabulary a lot through the exercises, and the other CLE books are multi-faceted as well. When I use a CLE book, I feel that every word is there for a reason, it's all though out. I regularly start working with
Uso, and I always put it back on the shelf.
My problem is that I often lose my motivation if a resource is not outstanding from at least one aspect. They need to have 'personality', a kind of spark, creativity from the part of the writer. The other option is meticulous professionalism, which I also appreciate a lot. I need to like my resources, it's not good if I'm cold towards them, and I just use them. For me a good textbook is like a piece of art. I know it sounds like a lot (even weird?), but actually if you think about it, it should be a common thing. Textbooks should serve us, they need to help us learn in every possible way. This is another topic, but I often feel that things are a bit upside down. Failure is regularly blamed on the student, never on the resource or the teacher. I think the student can't be blamed: a textbook needs to be able to hold our attention and motivate us.
Access to English for example is a 4-volume textbook based on a story with the same characters. It's very interesting, and the characters are vivid and likeable. You don't want to stop, you want to reach the next unit to get to know what happens to them. The drawings are illustrations of the stories or the grammar exercises (that also often include the characters.) In contrast to this, a lot of textbooks are just a collage of newspaper clippings, e-mails, tourist phrasebook dialogues, train tickets and menus. I know it's an exaggeration that anyone could make one with some glue and scissors, but I hope you see my point. They don't want to appeal, be unique, they don't have a personality.
A lot of textbooks are like the result of some obligatory exercise that even the authors hated to do. They were happy when they were finished and they couldn't care less if we used these resources on the long run or not. I have this feeling very often: that the authors (teachers) don't care about me at all, they don't want me to learn, because my failure/success doesn't matter. I'm not sentimental about it, I just don't learn from these types of books, because if you don't care about me, I don't care about you. Earn your money elsewhere. The CLE books are outstanding because of their effectiveness. You know you're using your time and energy well, and this makes you go on, keeps you motivated.
(I know it's partly personal taste, and others like resources that I'm indifferent about. But they do
like them, and it's very important.)