Customer Reviews

All-Audio Spanish CD (LL(R) All-Audio Courses)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I bought this 6-disk package about 3 months ago and have been using it regularly in my 60 miles of commuting every day. I have been studying Spanish for about year; previously using tapes and books. The discs in All-Audio Spanish are well-organized, the speakers have different, clear voices and the discs are much easier to use than cassettes; primarily because you can go back quickly to a specific location to repeat a " chapter." The package also comes with a 4x5" pamphlet of 58 pages that lists the terms and words used in each chapter but gives none of the dialog, no guides to pronunciation, very little grammar information and is printed in tiny letters on poor quality brownish paper that is hard to read from.

There is no way this course meets the "all-audio" claim. Most of the time you already have to know what the words are before you can understand the Spanish-speakers. That means you have to have the single page of the documentation open and try to figure out through trial and error what word they are saying. In the car this is impossible even though I am familiar with a fair number of basic words.

Since the discs are excellent and well-recorded, however, I'd say they are worth the $30.00+ I paid for the package. It is flawed though because it is simply not set up for pure audio learning and I would recommend it only for intermediate students or those trying to polish up what they already knew sometime in the past.

Having read the previous reviews of this CD set, I wonder if I'm the only one who has enjoyed it. What excited me most about All-Audio Spanish was when I had listened to all 6 CDs and restarted Disk 1. I had felt a bit frustrated as the CDs progressed, feeling, as some other reviewers apparently have, that it was really fast. But when I started CD 1 again, and was able to speak along fairly well for the first few lessons (there are 35 total), I was really excited. I just completed a 17-hour drive, listening to the CDs the whole way, which was enough time to listen to all CDs twice. While I'm not nearly fluent, I'm amazed at how much of the conversation in the CDs I can actually understand. Particular features I like about the set:

The book: since it's all-audio, the book isn't much; it basically lists the words used in the CDs (listed by lesson), along with their translations. There's also a section on the grammar rules discussed on the CDs. The reason I like the book is because it's concise, and makes referencing from the CDs easy. It's not necessary to reference the book while listening, but I have found it helpful to review the words of a lesson in the evening when I'm not driving.

The organization: Each lesson is divided into lettered sections (i.e., Lesson 1a), from A to H. Each sub-lesson has it's own focus, such as new vocabulary words (A), or Hispanic cultural information (G).

Depth of language coverage: As the lessons progress, the narrator always teaches new vocabulary, but goes through all modes of language use, such as past tense, future tense, subjunctive, etc., making each lesson valuable. Other language books I've read separate subjects out without integrating necessary information, so if you're not interested in learning about riding trains, for example, you can just skip the section. But in this set, a lot of what you learn in each section applies to all parts of the language.

Difficulty format: What I mean by this is that the difficulty level goes up dramatically in the first 5 lessons (CD 1), and then stays there. Although you continue to learn new things, and there is necessarily some building on earlier lessons, the difficulty level stays about the same. Having said that, it's also wide open for continual learning. Since I'm not worried about completely understanding each lesson before tackling the next, it leaves me something else to learn when I come back to this lesson again. This also helps me retain the information that I do learn.

Things that bugged me about All-Audio Spanish:

Packaging: The CD holder in the box is not convenient for changing CDs when driving. The plastic is too stiff, too tight, and doesn't have a slit to make it easier to pull out the CD, making it necessary to touch front and back of the CD to pull it out (something I hate to do).

Overlooked words: This is minor, because you pick it up as you go through the lessons, but it bugged me. First, at the beginning, when the linguists are demonstrating how to pronounce the alphabet, they skip the letter "K". Also, as they're going through the numbers, they skip 11 and 12.

I highly recommend this CD set. I think that if you put any effort into it, you will reap huge benefits.

I had two years of high school Spanish, and another year in college. When my husband and I started traveling, I wanted to relearn some of my Spanish. Even with the background I had, this audio was much too fast. I have persisted with listening daily, but have not had the progress I would have wanted because relatively difficult and unusable sentences are repeated quickly, then I won't hear them again until I get back to that section of the day in several days(I'm listening on the way to work, so don't back tape up). Some sentences are not translated, and individual words have to be figured out by elimination of the words you already know. This is definately not a beginner course, but may be helpful for someone who had been relatively fluent in Spanish and now wants a review. I am in the search for another (and better) tape, hopefully oriented toward the traveler who will need to make hotel reservations, arrange train travel, etc.

It is difficult to understand quite a bit these CDs. The native speakers speak so quickly - which is fine if adequate written help is available. It isn't. I have to have Spanish speaking friends listen for me and then repeat the words slowly or write them or else I am lost.

Before trying this course, I took the Berlitz introductory course and courses I and II by Pimsleur. I found both the Berlitz and Pimsleur courses better than this one. I agree with all the reviewers who didn't like it. This course is too heavy on discussing grammar and vocabulary and not heavy enough on practicing dialogue. It's easier to learn grammar and vocabulary from books. Audio tapes are more useful for practicing dialogue and pronuncation. The section in each lesson where you are asked to respond is too difficult for a beginner, and at the same time not very useful for an intermediate student, and it's much too short. Now I am trying Pasos 2 which at least has more dialogue to listen to, even though the speakers use slang and are difficult to understand.

This product is good for someone who has had an introductory course and understands how Spanish verbs are conjugated. It is a little more advanced than beginner's course helped me learn more!

Trying to learn spanish on my own has been a chore but this set of cd's is really helping.

Most useful for its size. The key 2000 of 20000+ Spanish words are in caps. Concise, it doesn't waste your time but gives you a best return on your most precious investment -- your own effort. Its only real fault is that words referenced on the English section (appropriately somewhat smaller than the Spanish section) do not always appear in the Spanish section, and vice versa, though this fault seems universal in English-Spanish references. The only English-Espanol reference I liked well enough to send to our son in Peru.