Customer Reviews

Spanish for Health Professionals. Ingles para Profesionistas de la Salud. / Book and Multimedia CD-ROM. (Significant Learning Series)

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

 

 

I am a clinical social worker who works with Spanish speaking clients, primarialy around issues of sexual abuse. This compact book has helped me in the medical and mental health portions of my job. The authors have managed to choose phrases and expressions that are really right on target for getting the job done. The dictionary in the back of the book has the words I really need to assess my clients- these are not words that help you order dinner in a resort! I found the CD/ROM very useful, being able to replay a phrase as often as necessary to correct my pronunciation has made me feel more confident.

This book tries to cover Spanish for Health Professionals from the receptionist to the Doctor/Dentist. It does not adequately cover any of these areas. It tries to teach by showing the reader a conversation, but it goes no further. It has no discussion of common phrases or grammar, and the conversations are too situation specific. It does have a list of colors, months, numbers, etc. in the back of the book. The software portion is more of the same. I have limited knowledge of Spanish, and bought this book for a medical trip to Peru and found it to be practically useless. I would recommend spending your money on a good dictionary or phrasebook, or looking into some of the Spanish language software that is available.

For a product titled "Interactive Language Exercises" and referring to its "workbook", I expected a textbook-like format with actual "exercises"-- fill-in-the-blank, multiple choice, translate this phrase, etc. All this has is a list of phrases in English and Spanish. All the CDROM does is pronounce said list of phrases. The only "exercise" is rote memorization of these phrases. There is no instruction on grammar or why you say things the way you do, so there is absolutely no flexibility in learning how to say anything other than the exact phrase they have.

I personally already speak quite a bit of Spanish, so I could use these phrases to pick up some more vocabulary, but I could do that just as easily and much more conveniently from a medical dictionary or from my other variety of much cheaper medical phrasebooks. For someone who doesn't speak much Spanish I think this would be terrible. Who can rote memorize "680 dialog situations, 1200 vocabulary terms, 200 common expressions"? This TEACHES absolutely nothing!

A great buy. This book and CD does not make any reference to grammar, these are strictly many hours of listen and repeat drills that help you with your pronunciation. I learned a lot with the CD, now I speak more Spanish at work and they understand me! I give it five.

It's an OK book. However, more coverage needs to be involved with mental health issues, because of my interest in it professionally.