ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts covered in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book provides enough knowledge of grammar for those who spend a lot of time exposed to Spanish and who need the grammatical framework on which to hang the language they already have. In the past, grammar has been seen as a barrier to language learning. It has put more people off learning a language than it has helped. Because of the way grammar has been portrayed, students were often made to feel that only those who could master 'conjugations' and 'declensions' could learn a language. Grammar is about recognising word patterns which give one a framework to understand and manipulate a language; if they know the framework, they can 'build' new language of their own instead of having to learn everything by heart. The off-putting terms are just the technical terminology of language-learning.
