Customer Reviews

Mastering Spanish, Level 2: Book and 12 Cassettes (Foreign Service Institute)

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I have both the Level I and Level II Foreign Service Institute courses, and since I've already reviewed in detail how the Level I course works and compared it with the other major offerings out there, such as Michel Thomas's, Berlitz, and Instant Immersion, I'll keep this review brief. If you're interested I refer you to my review of the Level I class which I've also posted on Amazon.

This is basically the advanced course and continues with the same philosophy and structure as the Level I class. It is intended to get you up to speed conversationally as quickly as possible without getting bogged down in too many formal details of the grammar. The approach here is to teach you the grammar by means of many examples of individual spoken sentences and brief conversations and through substitution drills, along with brief discussions of the grammar which are interspersed occasionally between the audio sections. The big, 600+ page workbook allows you to follow along with the native language speakers, which is very helpful also. This contrasts with Michel Thomas's approach, which is just as pricey, but contains no workbook, drills, exercises, or even any memorization at all. It also emphasizes starting with the most basic sentence structures and then building up slowly from there, so that the principles are acquired almost intuitively. I also have the Thomas course and it is excellent as well, and for many people would also be a good choice. I like having the detailed workbook that this course provides, however, so I still have a preference for this one over the Thomas offering. But if you're looking for the most painless approach possible, without the rigors of any formal grammar, the Thomas course might be your best choice.

I have a pretty strong background in structural and comparative grammar and linguistics in general so I don't mind a little formal grammar, but most people don't and just want to get a speaking command of the language as quickly and painlessly as possible. For that purpose this course serves very well and is regarded by many as still the best one out there for that. Someone who masters the 24 tapes in these two courses, which is twice as much material as in most of the other big self-study courses, should have a pretty good command of spoken Spanish and be able to do pretty well conversationally.

This 12-cassette series is a fairly comprehensive course in Spanish grammar and usage for those with a slight familiarity with the language. I spent about 3 months of commuting time, 1-1/2 hrs/day, going through the tapes (at least twice each), and felt it was equivalent to a second or third year high school course. This is not a course for expanding one's vocabulary, although of course some new vocabulary was introduced. For vocabulary, I would recommend the Vocabulearn series of cassettes by Penton Overseas. My only complaint is the accompanying book, which was much bigger than it needed to be, since all of the text was duplicated in a phonetic version which I felt was of little or no use. I have spent about nine months now learning Spanish in my car, and have tried out a number of cassette series, and can certainly rate this as one of the best. The time allowed for the student's response was just right, unlike other series which push one too fast or too slow.

I am studying intensely to learn Spanish for communicating with the many hispanic workers living in my area. The book is somewhat difficult to use, but it is well worth the trouble. Althought some users are unhappy with the phonetic pronunciation system provided in the book (along with the standard Spanish spelling) I have found it to be very helpful once I invested the time to learn it. I will say that this is the most realistic program I have encountered. The speech on the tape is full speed and is very realistic. It has helped my comprehension immensely.

Each new concept, especially gramatical forms, are presented in a variety of audio exercises which require you to "think on the go." The exercises in which you have to substitute one word in a sentence for another (and therefore adjust for plurality, speaker, gender, etc.) are nothing short of brilliant. Each new gramatical form is presented in a variety of contexts and exercises which help develop skills. The exercises have helped me learn to speak for meaning, not simply repeat rote phrases. I especially appreciate the manner in which various social settings (visiting a hispanic home, lunch with a hispanic friend, a visit to an area attraction) are presented along with the vocabulary most likely to be needed for that setting.

This series is for the serious student. If you're willing to put in the work this series requires, I don't think it can be beat. My only complaint is that the series is not available on CD at this time. The series is recorded using old technology; there is some tape hiss but it doesn't interfere with your ability to comprehend. The book is obviously somewhat dated, but the gramatical concepts remain the same.

I finished the Pimsileur Spanish II, and got this course for further study rather than Pimsileur Spanish III . I had hoped that this course would be like the Pimsileur course, namely that I could just listen to it in the car on the way to work. However, I found out that the tapes really need to be used with the book. Many of the recordings seem to be old, and sometimes are difficult to hear with the background noise in my car (Pimsileur was much easier). While the information was certainly complete, this course required much more effort to learn than the Pimsileur, and was not nearly so fun. I do think it helped me learn more Spanish, which was the ultimate goal.

These cassettes can at first be off-putting: there's almost no English heard, and the Spanish is spoken quickly. But that's the way real Spaniards speak and as your ear gets used to the language as it's really spoken, it is truly exciting. With frequent repetition, your confidence and fluency grow rapidly. These tapes were made by the State Department in the late 50's, and some of the dialogue is hilarious: the men go out to the airforce base to review the bombers, while the women fret about their dresses and clean out the ashtrays. But if some of the social customs are dated, the rigor and clarity of the tapes are classic. For the committed learner, I don't think there's anything out in the market that compares.

I didn't start with Barron's. For the first month or two, I worked with the Learn in Your Car series -- excellent for basics. I switched to this for greater fluency -- and found them to be a superb combination.

I am so grateful to the previous reviewers, as I bought these tapes on their advice. I have reached the point where I can read and write Spanish well and my grammar is pretty good, but I still get lost in real world situations where natives are speaking Spanish quickly. These tapes are just the answer I was looking for.

They speak really quickly, so these are definitely not for beginners, but I am loving them because natives talk just as quickly as they do on these tapes. I also like that they include a book, because often times they talk so fast I just can't catch what they are saying, but a quick glance at the book gets me back on track immediately.

They have a lot of drills and grammar and verb conjugation practice that I really appreciate. I also think these are a real bargain for the price -- I am too cheap to pay ... for some of the others that I see have good reviews. I think these are a real bargain for [the price].

The only criticism is, as mentioned in other reviews, they are REALLY dated and you will definitely feel like you are in Ozzie and Harriet land (50's era for you ... out there reading this).

I bought the cassette version and found it to be the best investment in Spanish that I've made. As stated in some of the other reviews, there isn't a lot of English spoken (one of the features I was looking for). I've had 4 years of Spanish prior to this (but it's been about 7 years since my last class). I bought the tapes for a trip to Spain and found them to be incredibly helpful. If you do have a grasp of the spanish language, I would recommend about a year (just the fundimentals of verb tenses), I think that you'll find these tapes the best on the market (yes better than Pimsluer). If you don't have a grasp and are looking for a basic tourist phrases etc, I would recommend ultimate spanish basic intermediate or Pimsleur 1. Some other great additions to this set are 501 Spanish verbs.

As previsous reviewers put it, the recording is not the greatest, but the content is pretty good. It covers all the basics so it is helpful for intermediate learners to review what they already know and to learn more. What I like most about this is that not only it makes you repeat the same sentence again and again, it also gives you a lot of variation of the same expression to practice with. The overall program is very focused on "speaking." It is relatively inexpensive compared to other language programs too. If you can read and listen fairly well already and just need to improve your speaking skills, this is a good buy.

I'm actually just finishing the first level of Barron's Mastering Spanish and I think it's going to be a little hard to maintain momentum through this next level. I'm excited about what this one has to offer, though. It explores a lot more tenses and looks like a great platform for getting closer to fluency, if you are disciplined about it. They change things up a little on this one, which should be nice.

As far as the approach goes, I think it's valuable. It seems to give one a pretty good background for eventual immersion in almost any Spanish speaking country. You will be understood wherever you go and you will have a good base level of vocabulary to get around. The problem with this program as with any Spanish program that intends to be applicable to a broad range of Spanish speaking countries, is that wherever you go, there are going to be words, constructions and phrases that people will understand but look at you funny for saying. My wife is Argentinian and her family often laughs at me for phrases I use that sound funny to them. The fact that the corriculum is pretty old makes it a little worse too. Some of the vocabulary is a little archaic. But the important thing is that the approach focuses on internalizing grammatical structure through variation, substitution and interpretation drills among others. So regardless of how funny you sound, you will be able to communicate (on the cheap) and getting around and getting fluent will be easier once you decide to take that three month trip to Spain or Chile or Mexico that you've been meaning to take for years.

But aside from the value of the approach and all that other stuff, it's funny (and sad) how sexist the narratives and drills can be. I guess it's a good picture of what American and Latin American culture was like 30 or 40 years ago. In the tranlation drills, they'll always have things like "she's in the kitchen and he's in the living room" or "she's sweeping" or "she's cleaning" rather than "him" doing that kind of work. But I don't think that's anything that will impair your learning of spanish.

So there you have it.

~Ike

I got a lot out of the first course, so of course I picked this one up as
soon as I had finished it. I was not disappointed - the course itself is
thorough and well thought-out. It's a little old - the course was put
together in the 50's, and there are a few anachronisms in there (both in the
English translations as well as the Spanish), but the drills and exercises
are perfectly designed to help you remember the grammar without having
to stop and think before you speak. More than anything else, I can tell
immediately when what I'm trying to say "sounds" wrong, even if I can't
remember the exact grammatical rule that makes it wrong.

Having listened to both courses twice (I'm currently going through level 2
for a third time), I'm not yet fluent in Spanish, but I'm very comfortable
with it. I can watch Spanish language TV and make sense of what's going on,
even if I don't catch everything, and this course has been my main means
of study (I've never taken a formal Spanish class). I've attempted a few other
"learn in your car" Spanish courses since, but none of them even compare to
Barron's.

I wouldn't recommend picking up just this course without listening to level 1 first, though - these two courses are designed to be part of a continuous unit (even the characters in the dialogs carry over from level 1). In fact, there are a few forward references to "unit 39", for example, but this course ends at
unit 30. It appears that there are more lessons, but unfortunately, Barron's
isn't selling them :(