Colloquial Spanish of Latin America: The Complete Course for Beginners (Colloquial Series) [Audio Cassette]

Roberto Roderigues-Saona (Author), Roberto Rodriguez-Saona (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 11, 1994 | Series: Colloquial Series

Specially written by an experienced teacher for self-study or class use, the course offers you a step-by-step approach to written and spoken Spanish of Latin America. No prior knowledge of the language is required.
What makes Colloquial Spanish of Latin America your best choice in personal language learning?
* interactive - lots of exercises for regular practice
* clear - concise grammar notes
* practical - useful vocabulary and pronunciation guide
* complete - including answer key and special reference section.
Cassettes accompany the course to help you with listening and pronunciation skills. By the end of this rewarding course you will be able to communicate confidently and effectively in a broad range of situations.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Roberto Rodriguez-Saona, a Spanish lecturer from the University of Leeds, has prepared a beginner's instructional course in Latin American Spanish consisting of a comprehensive manual plus two cassette tapes that support the material from the book and attune your ear to the nuances of colloquial Spanish as it is spoken in Latin America.

The book's lessons start off simply enough with greetings (saludos) such as "aló" and "buenos días" and numbers 1 through 100, reinforced by Spanish dialogues to practice and exercises to complete. But by the end of chapter 20, you'll be comfortable chatting about all sorts of topics, glibly tossing off verbs in past tense, future, conditional, and the subjunctive. With a grammar summary, an answer key to the exercises, and a two-way glossary, plus the tapes that accustom you to comprehending Spanish spoken at the tempo you'll hear when you hit the streets of Latin America (a bit faster than what you encounter in many language classes), Rodriguez-Saona's course helps you speak and understand Spanish correctly and with confidence. --Stephanie Gold

Language Notes

Text: English, Spanish

Product Details

• Audio Cassette
• Publisher: Routledge; Bk&Cassett edition (August 11, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0415089549
• ISBN-13: 978-0415089548
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.5 x 1.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 2.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,538,276 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good contemporary textbook, needs more practice part, January 30, 2000

By 

NOBUKI SUGITA - See all my reviews

This review is from: Colloquial Spanish of Latin America: The Complete Course for Beginners (Colloquial Series) (Audio Cassette)

This book and cassettes guide you from the very basic of the Spanish language to the intermediate level in a step-by-step way. After you have completed this book, you should have a basic knowledge and can understand and make yourself understood in many of the situations you might encounter in Latin America. The contents of each lesson are selected so that you will become familiar with various aspects of life in Latin America. Also, the topics are presented in a slightly different manner from one lesson to the next, making learning less boring. My only complaint with this course is that it needs more practice part. This is especially true with the accompanying cassettes, which has only two hours of recording in total, apparently far few hours to achieve fluency. The conversations are usually recorded only once and without any pause between sentences for you to repeat them. In fact, the tapes do not force you to practice so you must find some way for practice, using this book or other. Of course, I understand that including a very comprehensive practice, such as repetition, transformation, substitution and so on is beyond the scope of this kind of textbooks but if there is such a course then it would be a tremendous help for students. The contents of the lessons are practical and contemporary without becoming too much specific. All in all, I found this book to be a good value but if you are looking for something that makes you practice you have to supplement this with additional materials.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Book Good / Cassette Bad, November 5, 2001

By 

LeftyGtar (Anaheim Hills, CA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Colloquial Spanish of Latin America: The Complete Course for Beginners (Colloquial Series) (Audio Cassette)

It's a good workbook to use after you have studied the basic, intro to Spanish books and tapes. There are some good exercises that build upon basic Spanish. However, I think it benefits to listen to spoken Spanish in any language course, and the major downfall in this one is the English narrator on the tapes. Imagine your most boring, nasal impaired, sleep producing college professor -- that's the guy narrating. There is also an irritating "ding" every time a translation occurs. If you are already proficient in Spanish vocabulary & are looking for a general workbook to hone up your skills, buy only the book; you will benefit from it. However, if you need to listen to spoken Spanish (like I do) to build and reinforce your pronunciation skills, skip both.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Look elsewhere, January 8, 2003

By 

Gwilym - See all my reviews

This review is from: Colloquial Spanish of Latin America: The Complete Course for Beginners (Colloquial Series) (Paperback)

Most books in the Colloquial series are very good indeed, but this one is a sad exception. The main drawback is the fact that it lacks vocabularies after the dialogues(!) - meaning that you have to work it out yourself and you don't really know which words to learn. If you already speak (European) Spanish this book is very helpful as it highlights the differences that exist in Latin America. Unless you already speak Spanish this will be a total waste of your money and I'd recommend some other book.