Customer Reviews

All The Spanish You'll Need/8 One Hour Audiocassette Tapes/Complete Learning Guide and Tapescript (Cassettes) (Language Dynamics : Takes the Foreign Out of Language) (Spanish Edition)

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I am a former US diplomat and current international business consultant. I can say that Language Dynamics courses are the only courses I know of that are truly dedicated to effective and immediate communication in the target language. Academic courses often reflect the literary interests of professors, many of whom never had the experience of learning the target language as a second language. With these courses, you can hit the streets after every lesson knowing you can say more than you could yesterday.

I base my review of 'All the Spanish You'll Need' on the excellent results I have gotten in a very short period of time.
Not only have I learned to communicate effectively in Spanish
(I am now understood and converse with native speakers at work) I have also learned to read and write the language a bit.
What impresses me most is that all of this was accomplished in a minimum of time and very enjoyably. This course is so easy and effective that I believe ANYONE could learn Spanish from it. I know I did.

Several months ago I bought 'All The Spanish You'll Need' for my family to prepare us for a trip to Mexico. I work for a company that has branches throughout Latin America and Europe and from time to time they fly us to certain destinations for training, etc ... This time they let me take my family and I wanted everyone to be prepared. Especially me. I couldn't be happier. This course is so fast, easy and effective that even my five year old was running around saying phrases and speaking Spanish. My boss was impressed as well as my Mexican counterparts, some of whom speak English, and some who don't. But in any case, it was obvious from their comments that I impressed them with what I was able to say and understand. Everything I learned was in a three week period and from this course. Need I say more? This was more than I needed in the way of Spanish and was a true bargain. I highly recommend that you buy it and see for yourself.

I am impressed with the quality of instruction found in 'All The Spanish You'll Need'. I work in the travel industry and have been deluged with poor quality phrase book style instructional courses for years. There is nothing wrong with a few stock phrases, don't get me wrong. The difference between that type of course and All the Spanish You'll Need is that this is the 'real' thing, not a phony cover up. With this course you will truly learn a foundation which could eventually lead to fluency in Spanish. This of course requires lots of explanation which the instructor and the native speaker on the course provide. One needs explanations when learning a foreign language, as well as a good solid method like this one where you learn to speak original sentences within a half hour of using the course. There was even section on travel vocabulary, idiomatic phrases, using the past, present and future, and 'practical' vocabulary used by native speakers. The voices on the tapes are by far the best I have ever heard (and I have heard a great deal of them, believe me). The native Spanish speaker's voice is simply superb. Most tapes leave you in the dark. You don't usually even understand what the heck they are saying half of the time. With this course I got an instant English translation and often a clear, concise explanation so I ALWAYS understood what I was learning.

With most language tapes, you have to read the book to understand what is going on. This is dangerous if you are in the car driving to work! These tapes have the virtue that English and Spanish are both on the tape. But that is their only virtue. You get very little for a lot of money. Large parts of the tapes are blank and a lot of time is taken up with irritating comments from the host, such as "Listen carefully listener, very good, OK, Did you get that?" You seldom learn anything useful. How often does one want to say, "John is English. he speaks English. Mateus is a Portugese wine. What time is it? It is twenty to one in the morning." Tenses, genders, pronouns are presented in no apparent order and you never learn the things you want to be able to say, such as "What time does the show start/train leave. Where can I get something to eat," etc.
The idea behind the tapes is good but it is very poorly executed.

Tape program is clear and builds from basic language to more complex in approprate sequence. Both the English and Spanish phrases are repeted twice. The English could have been stated only once. The tape does not leave adequate time for the learner to repeat after the native speaker, additional time could have been added. Stopping the tape occasionally is inconvienent, but the product is still a good one.

This product would get an easy four stars except the quality of the recording is poor. You would think for this kind of money he would at least give you a decent tape. You have to turn it all the way to the max to hear it and if there is any noise going on around you, forget it. So walking down the street listening to the tape is fine as long as there's no traffic. It wasn't just my tape either I have his French tapes and they have the very same problem. His technique keeps your attention, speakers are clear, but the sound quality is so annoying it makes me want to return both sets of tapes!

I am impressed with the way in which the author designed this course which allows one to maximize ones communicative ability in Spanish by using and combining a small amount of words and vocabulary. The simplicity of this course, and its effectiveness is simply amazing. I'm going to order copies for my entire family so that they'll leave my tapes alone and let me use them.

I recently ordered this series of tapes and have found them very useful in my quest to speak Spanish. The fidelity was just fine so I can't agree with the review that states the opposite. Combining this course with a couple of written ones that I have purchased seems to be ideal. The only area that could be improved is the manual that came with the course. Listing the sentence parts and words with pronounciation breakouts would be very helpful.

Tip; I took the tapes and combined to make 1 CD in .mp3 format so I could listed from my laptop. rtmuller@earthlink.net

Language Dynamics courses are the only courses I know of that are truly dedicated to effective and immediate communication in the target language. Academic courses often reflect the literary interests of professors, many of whom never had the experience of learning the target language as a second language. With these courses, you can hit the streets after every lesson knowing you can say more than you could yesterday. Reviewer: An international business consultant and former US diplomat from the San Francisco Bay Area