Customer Reviews

Conversational Spanish in Nothing Flat (8 One Hour CDs/200 Page Illustated Text/Answer Keys & Tapescript) (Spanish Edition)

5 star:		(18)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I highly recommend this course. As others have said, the Spanish pronunciation of the instructor is impeccable (but the moderator's is the opposite).

There is quite a bit of repitition on the CDs, which is very beneficial to the learning process. However, after going through four of the CDs and the first part of the book, it is my opinion that to get a command of the language you MUST read and study the book. It isn't a summation of the CDs at all. It contains new words and is a much better guide to constructing sentences than the CD. For those of you that want the convenience of audio, rather than having to read, you may want to do what I am doing. That is, go through the book and tape record what you are havig difficulty remembering (car playback). Or, record the questions and answers out of the book - this is helping me to form sentences.

Downside - there are too many typos in the book.


Good luck

This program is a tremendous help for anyone whose study of Spanish was mostly concerned years ago with acquiring vocabulary for written tests. This "learn-vocabulary-words-for-tests!" style of teaching Spanish was popular over 30 years ago when I studied written Spanish in High School and College. But I longed to SPEAK Spanish to people--now finally here in this program "Conversational Spanish in Nothing Flat" there is a really wonderful format which is aiding me in realizing this long-thought-about hope that I could one day SPEAK Spanish!

I am enjoying both the book and the 8 CDs found in this course. Very effective method! Really gets you speaking Spanish quickly and without the hassle.
Book is great too. Easy to read, follows the CDs and has a word for word tapescript at the back.
Biggest Plus: Easy and Fast

I just returned my Pimsleur Spanish course for a $200.00 dollar refund because 'Conversational Spanish in Nothing Flat' totally smoked the Pimsleur course in all major categories. My categories are as follows:
1. CD Quality. I feel that despite the fact that Conversational Spanish does not yet have multiple tracks, the quality of the recordings and the CD quality is much higher than that of Pimsleur and other competitors I have tried.
2. Voice Quality. This is where I feel Conversational Spanish is the unquestioned leader among all Spanish courses I have tried. Superb diction and voice quality throughout, but especially the native Spanish speaker. Obviously a voice professional (probably radio).
Play the CD to any native Spanish speaker and they'll tell you 'Now that's good Spanish'.
3. Price - Dirt cheap for what you're getting. Pimsleur offers no written material. With this course you get the 8 CDs plus the 200 page written text (and answer keys).
4. Excellent focus on communication - This course got me speaking practical and useful Spanish right away. Pimsleur charged me and arm and a leg and I still couldn't communicate effectively after the course.
Overall: A great value, high quality product and a wonderful effective method.

I bought this CD set to further my spanish, however when I recieved the CD's and played them I came to a horrifying realization! These CD's are exactly the same as Behind the Wheel Spanish (by the same author) only with a different name stamped on the box!!!! Buyers beware! If you own Behind the Wheel Spanish don't buy this or vice versa! Behind the wheel spanish is really good but this whole experience makes me cautious ... !

I really am enjoying this approach to learning Spanish. I never thought learning to speak Spanish could be so fast and so easy.
My course and CDs appear to be professionally produced and came in an attractive and sturdy container. The instructor and the Spanish speaker's voices are both excellent and they interact with each other beautifully. I love how they teach you to speak Spanish using your own original sentences. I am truly amazed at how much Spanish I have learned to speak in such a short time.
I have taken several Spanish courses in college and have some understanding of the structure of the language. Several sections on three CDs were dedicated to the past and future tenses including the preterite past, the imperfect past and even the present perfect past. Both the near future and regular future were also thoroughly covered on the CDs and the text.. This combined with the present and present progressive tenses presented in a non-grammatical format makes this approach easy and a true winner in terms of its overall completness. Nothing I have tried even comes close.
I found the instructor to be quite stimulating and informative and the Spanish speaker's voice is excellent as well. The English speaking instructor has taught at the university level at several well known colleges and was even rated as an excellent instructor by his students. This is verifiable and I checked it all out.
Overall, the book and CDs are excellent. and are very easy to use and to understand making this the best Spanish course I have tried.

I ordered this and Behind the Wheel Spanish for my husband for Christmas. Imagine our surprise when we found out that these two items are IDENTICAL, except for the titles. Even though the prices are different! Conversational Spanish even costs more, leading you to believe the products are different. So be careful. And while the lessons are useful, the format is the same as those of taped lessons - all they did was copy the tapes to CD's, so the instructions to rewind and play the sentance again don't work. Also, there are long silences where the tapes wind to the end.

I live near a big metropolitan area and I do lot of driving (and sometimes trains) every day. I bought Conversational Spanish 8 CDs with the expectation of learning some Spanish during my two hour daily commute. I couldn't have underestimated this course more. I learned A LOT of Spanish during my commutes and what I have learned I owe to this great course. The thing that makes it so effective for me is that all the Spanish comes with English definitions so I don't have to stop the CD to go look up meanings.
Add to this the fact that Luis (the native speaker) always repeats enough so that if you space out for a second, get honked at, or whatever, you still catch the lesson.
My impressions of this course are that it is simple, easy to understand, and effective at getting you 'conversational' in Spanish fast.
I find it nearly unbelievable that I am able to speak as much basic Spanish as I now do in such a short period of time.
By the way .... The book is great too. (When you're not driving of course).

From Berlitz to Pimsleur, I would say that all Spanish courses have good and bad points.
What makes Conversational Spanish in Nothing Flat so good is that it gets you speaking the language right away and then builds on those basic concepts throughout the course.
The structure of this course, beginning with how easily a novice learner can begin saying his or her own sentences in Spanish almost immediately, gives even the shyest person confidence to speak Spanish.
Most courses, despite their good points, shoot you right down in the beginning. You just don't feel like you will ever make it! Language Dynamics overcomes this feeling of 'overwhelm' by giving you simple yet useful basic bits of language to improve upon daily.
First you crawl, fall down and then walk.
Most foreign language courses expect the baby learner to run a marathon without the opportunity of learning to walk first.
Conversational Spanish takes the time and effort to take you from the crawling stage, to the tottering stage, picks you up when you fall down, teaches to speak real Spanish little by little and then you just take off.
No course does what this one does and for these reasons I highly recommend you try it.

In my opinion, no "single" language tool (a book for example) will make you completely proficient in a particular language. The key is to sellect various well crafted tools with different approaches. This gives you a more well-rounded view of your subject. Conversational Spanish in Nothing Flat will not by itself make you fluent but it adds "an important piece" to your developing knowledge and it does this very well by touching all bases and giving you lots of fun quizzes where new things are introduced and earlier lessons are reinforced again again.