Customer Reviews

Berlitz New Basic Spanish (Spanish Edition)

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

 

 

The consumer should be aware that Berlitz, INC has become a notorious exaggerator of its own worth. Critiques of Berlitz-related products are often so gushy and ecstatic with delight that they leave the reader believing that they could only have been written by Berlitz staff.

Berlitz products are notorious among foreign-language education professionals for their lack of exercises, their scanty grammatical explanations, their inflated prices, and the flashy pseudo-science of their famous "method" (a gussied-up listen-and-repeat scheme). The informed consumer will take the time to compare Berlitz "method" products with other, often university-related course supports. The focus of university-generated products is generally less on the marketing and the cultivation of repeat-buyers and more neutrally, disinterestedly geared towards the linguistic enrichment of the student.

The business traveller is particularly ill-served by methods that promise enormous bounds in fluency across short time periods. These travellers often find themselves seduced by grandiose promises--often while under high-stress conditions [foreign travel, foreign-language presentation preparations]--and end up rather disappointed for having been duped.

Any "method" that claims to produce fast, effortless results is suspect. Most "methods" are marketing illusions dreamed up by sales teams.

The Berlitz method, in my opinion and in that of many language professionals, is the foreign-language-learning equivalent of a get-rich-quick scheme. I have been disappointed by their products and teaching in every case I have ever crossed WITHOUT EXCEPTION.

The folks at Berlitz must be getting desperate. Another listen-and-repeat songbook? One hour with ANY OTHER WORKBOOK will teach you the Spanish you need to "get by". If you're a more serious student, just buy a more serious product. The bottom line is: this product just doesn't work and it's not in the least charming. The reviewers who give five stars are Berlitz employees and most of the reviews you're reading are sales pitches.

NOTE A DESTINATION DES PROFS: Ces livres sont du gaspillage total. Il faut les eviter ? tout prix ? risque de decevoir vos ?tudiants.

I have tried most of the Spanish language learning products out there (Rosetta Stone being the notable exception). Pimsleur is still my favorite because it introduces small amounts of vocabulary at a time, and then has the learner apply that vocabulary in a conversational situation. When I tried this Berlitz product as a beginning Spanish student, I quickly set it aside because it expected too much from a beginning user, and moved way too quickly with too little repetition. After getting some basic language skills with Pimsleur, I went back to Berlitz, and this product was a satisfactory review, but it could be far, far better. The biggest shortfall is that responses are usually unsupported. In Pimsleur, when the narrator asks you to say a particular phrase in Spanish, a native speaker repeats what you should have said, so you can compare your response with the correct response, and see if you are on the right track. With this Berlitz product, you don't know if your answer is correct because the CD does not provide the correct response. The accompanying book has lots of vocabulary and useful information, and is intended to be used with the CD. The CD works well enough in the car (which is the only place I have time to work on language learning), but there are exercises that call for referring to the book. The Berlitz product is definitely better than some products that seem to just say long lists of vocabulary words with no opportunity to use them. Berlitz groups vocabulary by topic, does not provide an overwhelming number of words at at time (but still gives too many to absorb in a lesson), and then actually uses them in context.