Customer Reviews

Complete Idiot's Guide to Learning Spanish (The Complete Idiot's Guide)

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

I'm studying Spanish with several self-study guides. I was excited about this one at first, because it seemed modern, practical, and fun. However, I didn't use it as often as the other self-study guides because the organization is so scattershot. The author jumps from one thing to the next without much development. My desire to write this review, however, stems from finding some errors that have shaken my confidence in the book's accuracy. Some are merely typos that I tried to overlook, except their frequency began to worry me. Examples: "he" being rendered as al rather than el. Phonetic pronunciations that are wrong. Other misspellings that are obviously just typos. But what got me really worried was when Ms. Stein finally gets to the past tense, she says that the yo form of regular -ar verbs in the preterite tense ends in a. Actually, it ends in -e. I looked this up to make sure in three other sources. So, it's just wrong, and the mistake didn't get caught by the publisher. Would a beginner catch this mistake if this were his only source? In addition, Ms. Stein gives the translation for to hurry as apurarse. Apurarse means to fret or worry oneself. To hurry is actually apresurarse. I'm sort of perversely proud for catching these errors, since I'm a beginning Spanish speaker, but I'm also very disppointed that these errors are in the book.

I love this book! I think it is good for someone who is learning Spanish for the first time as well as people like myself who are trying to "relearn" a language. I like the way this book gives out cultural information. It is good to be educated about a culture as well as learning about a language. My friend from Spain is disgruntled by the lack of usage of the "vosotros/as" forms in other language series. If you are going to Spain, the speakers there use the "tu" and "vosotros" forms instead of the Latin American forms of "tu" and "ud". The side notes and pictures are fun. Gail Stein has done an excellent job of presenting the Spanish language. I hope the "Idiot's Guide" people expand their language series as well as putting their language series on cassette.

"Idiots Spanish" is disappointing on the scale of "Idiots" books. I've purchased and read several of their series for research at work and all have proven very helpful, but this one falls short of being fun, interactive, or relevant information. The teaching methodology used in this book is useless. It's more of a reference-type book than a book you could use to learn the language.

My recommendation: skip this "Idiots" book and go with a combination of Pimsleur's Spanish tapes/cds to learn the spoken and "Practical Spanish Grammar" to learn the written.

Buenas suerte!

I am currently studying Spanish in an adult education class and am using this book as a daily supplement to the required textbook. It is so vauluable in terms of learning to actually speak the language. The phonetic pronunciations are excellent, and the entire book has well-organized chapters with excellent selections of practical and idiomatic expressions to enhance everyday, functional use of Spanish. Unlike some textbooks, this one is actually fun to read!

I am trying to learn Spanish and this book is helping to familiarize me with all aspect of the language, however I am finding so many mis- prints and wrong answers in the answer key that it is making me doubt everything else I am trying to learn. Seriously, did anyone edit or check answers in this book? The author and publishing company should be embarrassed. I would not reccomend this edition to anyone unless they were just brushing up on their Spanish and would know a mis- print when they see it.

I'm not advanced enough in my spanish studies to verify the mistakes other reviewers mentioned, but I wouldn't doubt their existence. I bought this book thinking it would be a good introductory primer to the language - it is, only if you know some sentence structure already and are familiar with the language to some extent.

It is also focused on the traveller, going in depth into phrases for hotels, airplanes and transportation. When I tried to look up the word "dog", it wasn't there. Not even "animal" or "pet" is listed in the index.

I'm going to set this book aside for when I'm more familiar with the language and want a quick primer for travelling--and get something else to really teach me spanish.

I bought this book to supplement a set of CD's for learning Spanish. I was dissapointed in the way the book was layed out--not quite a dictionary, not quite a learning text. It has been very difficult for me to find references to particular parts of laguage, especially specific words and phrases--it was difficult to find different ways to say 'please' and 'thank you'! It looks like I made a bad choice in a supplemental book. The Idiot's guide, I suppose, is meant to be used starting at the front cover and moving to the back. It may be a good teaching tool when used this way, but has been a very dissapointing reference for me in my efforts to learn a little Spanish.

I don't know how this book made it to the printer's with so many mistakes. I'm currently in Chapter 20 and estimate that there's been at least 25 errors including the text and answer guide!

Every time there's an error, I spend 10 minutes trying to understand where I'm off-track. The errors aren't typos, but just plain wrong. It's very frustrating.

As a sometimes Spanish teacher, I was stunned when a student brought me this book and then couldn't figure out why they hadn't learned Spanish. Most of the information in the title is so basic it could be found anywhere, the meat of grammar and other important concepts is concealed in outright silliness, and the book strikes me as being incomplete, even in what it covers. If you want to learn Spanish, spend the money on a REAL textbook. It may not have the cutesy cartoons and the inane humor, but it will certainly have more substantial information for the serious learner of the Spanish language.

A question I ask of introductory language books is this. "If I was dropped in the middle of a country whose language the book was trying to teach me, would I not only be able to survive but thrive there based on the information in the book"? I think this book goes a long way to meeting this criteria. It is fun, informative, & well organized with essential information for almost any scenario you may find yourself in.