Puntos de partida: An Invitation to Spanish [Hardcover]

Take a fresh look at Puntos – it’s everything you wanted and more than you hoped for.

Puntos has offered more than a million students a solid foundation to their language studies. The new edition of Puntos maintains its pioneer approach of the development of all four skills with a strong grammar and vocabulary foundation, as well as the teacher tested activities. The new design of Puntos brings to this program the best tradition of excellence and outstanding instructor support adaptable to different teaching and learning styles.

Puntos , the most successful Intro Spanish program ever, is now:

• breaking new ground to meet the changing needs for face-to-face, hybrid, and online Spanish programs.
• offering students more opportunities to develop their communication skills via TelePuntos, a new integrated video program with corresponding in-text and digital activities.
• innovating through LearnSmart, a first-of-its-kind adaptive learning system within McGraw-Hill Connect, adjusts to the learning needs of every student

This new edition of Puntos provides students with all of the necessary tools to take their second language acquisition from the classroom into their daily lives in an efficient and personalized way. With Connect Spanish, the exclusive digital learning platform from McGraw-Hill, students have access to Mundo interactivo, an immersive, story-based world where they experience the thrill of mastering relevant, task-based communication scenarios in real-world contexts. Also, with synchronous and asynchronous video chat functionality, students can easily engage in communication practice online. Additionally, McGraw-Hill and Blackboard® have teamed up to simplify the instructor and student digital learning experience! McGraw-Hill allows you to manage your course content, assignments, assessments, and grades all from within your institution’s existing Blackboard environment.

Puntos – it WILL take you there!

Thalia Dorwick retired as McGraw-Hill’s Editor-in-Chief for Humanities, Social Sciences, and Languages. For many years she was also in charge of McGraw-Hill’s World Languages college list in Spanish, French, Italian, German, Japanese, and Russian. She has taught at Allegheny College, California State University (Sacramento), and Case Western Reserve University, where she received her Ph.D. in Spanish in 1973. She was recognized as an Outstanding Foreign Language Teacher by the California Foreign Language Teachers Association in 1978. Dr. Dorwick is the coauthor of several textbooks and the author of several articles on language teaching issues. She is a frequent guest speaker on topics related to language learning, and she was also an invited speaker at the II Congreso Internacional de la Lengua Española, in Valladolid, Spain, in October 2001. In retirement, she consults for McGraw-Hill, especially in the area of world languages, which is of personal interest to her. She also serves on the Board of Trustees of Case Western Reserve University and on the Board of Directors of the Berkeley Repertory Theatre.

Ana María Pérez-Gironés is an Adjunct Associate Professor of Spanish at Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut, where she teaches and coordinates Spanish language courses. She received a Licenciatura en Filología Anglogermánica from the Universidad de Sevilla in 1985, and her M.A. in General Linguistics from Cornell University in 1988. Professor Pérez-Gironés’ professional interests include second language acquisition and the use of technology in language learning. She is a coauthor of A otro nivel, Puntos en breve, Second Edition, and ¿Qué tal?, Seventh Edition. She is also a coauthor of the Student Manuals for Intermediate Grammar Review and Intensive and High Beginner Courses that accompany Nuevos Destinos.

Anne Becher received her M.A. in Hispanic Linguistics in 1992 from the University of Colorado-Boulder, and now coordinates the Beginning Spanish One course and teaches pedagogy and methods courses for the Department of Spanish and Portuguese there. She has taught beginning through advanced levels of Spanish since 1996, including several years teaching Modified Spanish classes for students with difficulty learning languages. She has published several reviews in Hispania, presents frequently at the Colorado Congress of Foreign Language Teachers (CCFLT) conferences, and has served on the boards of CCFLT and the Colorado chapter of American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese. She co-edited the bilingual literary journal La selva subterranea from 1987–1996.

Dr. Casilde A. Isabelli is an Associate Professor of Spanish at the University of Nevada, Reno, who received her Ph.D. in Spanish Applied Linguistics and a certificate in Second Language Acquisition and Teacher Education (SLATE) from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2001. Her research concerns adult second language acquisition in the formal classroom and study-abroad setting, multilingualism, and pedagogy. She has taught and/or currently teaches: Teaching of Foreign Languages Seminar, Romance Applied Linguistics, Introduction to Hispanic Linguistics, Spanish Phonetics and Phonology, and Spanish Composition, and hybrid Beginning Spanish. She was also the Coordinator of the Basic Spanish Language Program at UNR from 2001 until 2010. In addition to teaching at UNR since 2000, she has taught at the University of Iowa, the University of Minnesota, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Universitat de Barcelona, and Sonoma State University.