Customer Reviews

Colloquial Spanish of Latin America: The Complete Course for Beginners (Colloquial Series)

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

 

 

This book get 5 star for a number of reasons, but the main reason its near and dear to my heart is because it actually address things like email addresses and other technology and how they translate in spanish, None of my other book on learing spanish devote any time to things like e-mail. Being that I work in I.T. in a city that is around 75% hispanic I find this to be a nice touch.
The Tapes are nice, and the book is well laid out. I recomend it to fill in all the gaps that spanish 'textbooks' have.

For my situation this product is great. I have been a pitiful excuse for a spanish major. Though i have studied in class,i still have very little ability to communicate verbally in Spanish. I checked this book/Tape series out at my library ONLYA WEEK AGO. The tapes work to connect my full brain in Spanish. I do have a certain familiarity with the language already. But have found myself unable to use the knowledge. I can see that if i had this long ago, i would be much more coherent in Spanish, and be of a mind to be able to quickly reply in spanish, when spoken to. I wish i would have had it long ago.
The book,i see, is very comprehensive, and clear, and well laid out. It appears to cover what you need without a lot of extras to get lost in. Better than any textbook i've ever seen. For someone taking a class in Spanish, or who has studied in the past in a class or on their own, this is a great tool. IF you have no understanding of Spanish whatsoever, I would advise you to begin somewhere else, or if you are a beginner who is serious about speaking it,perhaps incorporate this book/tape series with another more basic learning tool. The first half of side one tape one is very very very basic, then after that it is more for the intermediate student as i am. There is no in between level in this course. It should not be for the complete beginner as it was created for, at least not on it's own. However, for my purposes,I like it, and the price is very cheap. I spent over 200 dollars on another course, and i find this inexpensive one has helped me much more in the one week i've had it,than in the year i've had the other,much more boring course. A note: I do have to utilize my pause button frequently when i am participating with the tape. For this reason it is not a good "learn in the car" resource, unless you are particularly good at hearing spoken spanish. But, it is NOT necesary to use the book to benefit from the tape,provided you are not a complete beginner. THis is nice, because sometimes i am too lazy to read while listening. One disapointment is that there are only two tapes included.

I've used this book twice now for trips to Mexico, going through most of the written exercises from Chapters 1-13 a few times, and I highly recommend it. I also purchased the CDs, but never really used them much as I didn't find them too practical for actually learning to speak/understand Spanish.

What this book will do: give you a good basic grounding in all the key grammar and structures of Latin American Spanish, help you in learning to read and write colloquial Latin American Spanish and have basic conversations, give you a good grounding in key vocabulary (traveling, writing emails, using the computer, shopping, renting hotel rooms, etc). It's well structured and well organized, but it's paced so quickly that I found it hard to retain some of what I learned--I ended up creating flash cards and doing some of the exercises repeatedly to make them sink in better.

It's also a great reference and supplement to other language-learning programs (the one I have used with the most success is the excellent Fluenz Spanish 1+2 Learning Suite Mac, Including DVDs, Audio CDs, Podcasts, and Fluenz Navigator. Next-Generation Spanish Language Learning Software.) As the title suggests, the book takes a conversational approach--the kind of real-life language you need in actual situations.

What this book won't do: give you much practice in spoken Spanish (understanding, pronouncing and speaking it yourself). Still, I found it very useful!

This is a great book as you start basic sentences from Chapter 1. Finishing the book will make you fluent enough to get by in Spanish.

I find this book great as I am learning South American Spanish, not Spanish from Spain. My teacher, who is from Argentina, also has purchased this book and is using it with other students who are learning Spanish to be used in Latin America.

This is an interesting and quite contemporary treatment of Spanish. I bought it because my high school Spanish was a long time ago and I wanted to bring it up to date. Certainly this book is good for that. There are a few weak points that take it down from the five-star rating I would probably have given it- not only are quite a few words in the text unglossed, but some idioms as well, and these are harder to find in a dictionary. Also, the book takes an inordinately long time before it finally moves out of the present tense so that other tenses (and moods) don't get as much coverage as they probably should. Also, I would have liked to have had more mention of the differences in the language as it is spoken from country to country. But for all of that, there is a lot of interesting and useful material in here. And I definitely plan to get Book 2.

As a teacher I have used this book for classroom instruction. I highly recommend the Routledge Colloquial Series for learning practical use of any language, though this book has fallen below the standard of most other books in the series. A large number of the texts are difficult for students to relate to. (Inflation, government announcements, etc. that have little practical use for a student who wants to learn to communicate in everyday life) The order of some of the lessons is hard to follow (learning present perfect and present perfect continuous before learning past tense for example) and in many instances precious little detail is given about grammatical structure. I recommend Routledge Colloquial Spanish by Untza Otaola Alday over this book. Spanish spoken in Spain is close enough that there shouldn't be any significant issue, and Untza's book is much better structured and easier to relate to. Colloquial Spanish (Colloquial Series (Multimedia))

I ordered this product on June 28th and it took 3 months for it to arrive!!! I think that alone disqualifies anyone from ever wanting it, but also, it glides through SPanish as though the individual is already fully conversant in Spanish, ie, has had at least 4+ years in school. I don't believe it's very useful, especially for the cost [$25.99] and wait!