36 of 36 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
This is an excellent review source!, September 27, 2006
This review is from: Best Test Preparation for the CLEP Spanish Language (Paperback)
This page says that the review guide was published in 1998; however, the one I recieved from Amazon was copyright 2003 and printed in 2006.
That said, this is an excellent source for reviewing for the test. It has three practice tests, with comprehensive explanations for EVERY correct and incorrect answer for each of the tests. It is also very helpful to listen to the included cds--it gives you a fairly accurate feel of how the real CLEP test will be.
The beginning of the book goes through every part of basic Spanish--everything from pronunciations to verb conjugation. Though it doesn't have the glitzy pictures of my college textbook (there are no pictures, actually), I feel that it is better organized and easier to follow. If you really spend the recommended time with this resource, I believe that passing the CLEP exam will not be really difficult. I passed the exam--but I also used (like I said earlier) a college textbook to augment my studies. Even so, the practice tests and accompanying explanations are very helpful. If anything, the CLEP exam I took seemed easier than the practice exams in this guide.
Highly recommended. I also recommend "501 Spanish Verbs"--that was a good guide for learning verb conjugation.
*I would like to note that the included cds that I received were mis-labeled, meaning that cd A is really cd B and vice-versa. Obviously not a big deal, just a little bothersome at first.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Decent but poorly written, January 15, 2010
This review is from: Best Test Preparation for the CLEP Spanish Language (Paperback)
I used this book and passed my spanish CLEP exam, so I can't complain too much. I agree closely with the reviewer who said "Fair But Full of Errors." The most useful part of the book are the practice tests and the quizzes for different grammar review areas. It was easy and quick to run through all the review sections and do all the review problems in between taking the practice tests. My practice test scores went up a little (but not a lot) after going through all the review material. The scoring of the practice tests seemed a bit strange to me--you could loose 30 of 130 points and still get a "perfect" 80, which doesn't seem realistic to me (and my actual test score was lower than my practice test scores). It was frustrating, however, to find quite blatant errors in the book and really misleading or poorly worded explanations. Of course this is written as review for people who should already know spanish, but nonetheless, quite a few times it had me shaking my head in confusion or anger, only to look it up in a normal spanish book and find it clearly and simply explained.
For example, one practice question went something like: "El ladron fue (muerto/matado) por el policía." After having paragraphs of useless information explaining all the other questions whose answers were obvious, the answer key only says something like: "The correct answer is "muerto" because muerto is the past participle for matar in the passive." Confused, I looked up matar and morir in every dictionary that I have, and it's always matar-matado, morir-muerto. What gives? Well, I finally went onto a couple online grammar forums, and this is apparently a subtle grammar exception for this particular word, and even native speakers have trouble explaining it except to say that they agree that either you use muerto for matar in the passive and only in the passive, or you avoid the whole issue by using asesinado. Digging deeper, I found that the real answer possibly has to do with an antiquated use of the word morir as a transitive verb, which happens to have its vestiges left in the passive tense only. Mabye every dope already knows this, but I think the the book should have used a couple more sentences to explain this, or it should not have used such an unusual exception in their quiz. In a book where there are so many mistakes, I initially took this bad explanation as a flat-out error.
The practice tests for the reading part were very similar to the actual test, if not slightly harder, which is the way to err on a practice test. The listening portion, however, was WAY harder than the actual test. In fact, I personally found the listening portion of the practice test very disheartening because it went so fast and used such advanced topcics that I simply could not keep the topics and all their details straight in my head (you only get to listen once). The real test, however, stuck to very simple subjects and had relatively easy-to-remember questions and quick answers. The only thing difficult about the real CLEP test is that the volume was much too low and the quality was really scratchy, so it was difficult in that regard. Luckily, I brought my own earphones to the test because if I hadn't, the cheap, test-supplied earphones would have been insufficient to hear anything.
I found out, much too late, that Peterson's offers practice tests online--you can even get them free through some library websites. The Peterson's reading comprehension tests were ever so slightly simpler than the CLEP exam tests, which is a slight disadvantage, but the listening portion was right on target! After I did a couple practice tests on the Peterson's website, I was feeling much more better about myself and more confident about the test. And it left me praying that the real test would be more like Peterson's than the REA book. And it was, in the listening portion anyway.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Good source for study. Very close to the real tests., January 9, 2007
This review is from: Best Test Preparation for the CLEP Spanish Language (Paperback)
I tested for the 12 credit exam and passed with a very high score (had to in order to get the 12 credits).
The material was very close to the actual test. Some of the pronunciation quizzes had a harsh accent, but it wasn't a problem to understand the conversations. It was very useful to practice with the preparation tests that came in the CDs.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
