Customer Reviews

Puntos de partida: An Invitation to Spanish Student Edition w/ Online Learning Center Bind-in card, 7th Edition

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

 

 

If you really want to learn Spanish, and if you are willing to work hard, this series of books is an excellent choice. It starts with the assumption that you have a brain and moves quickly on. I had four college courses plus three weeks of intensive one-on-one tutoring in Central America, but it wasn't until I completed this course that I learned the language. I now teach Spanish in a local school and recommend this program to all my students.

I'm only on chapter 4 at this point, but it seems like a good textbook. It is very colorful and entertaining. The topics in each chapter are repeated in many exercises from different contextual angles, which keeps it fresh and makes it more effective. Additionally, you can register your book online and access even more practice material. I think this is a good book for a serious student who wants to learn to speak spanish.

I'm finishing up my second quarter of college-level study with this book after taking four years of high school French and, I have to say, the book is designed more for those with some background in the language.

You're not going to be able to pick this book up and teach yourself effectively; you need a professor/teacher filling in the gaps that the book assumes you'd know from past language study.

I found this aspect frustrating because I've had some mediocre professors and found that I can't just look to the book for answers.

Otherwise, the book is interesting and relatively entertaining with cultural highlights, recipes and scripts to go along with videos. Though it did seem overwhelming sometimes, to look at a page of text, vocabulary and grammar that (sometimes) seemed to have nothing to do with each other.

[...]

Knowing only English and French before beginning a course with this textbook, I have found it to give excellent coverage of major basics. The grammar is introduced in a logical fashion, with the present tense receiving extensive coverage before the introduction of past tenses. The vocabulary also reflects a nice blend of what one might reasonably see in real conversation. The brief culture notes are also informative and help one to get a sense of hispanic world; they are even in Spanish as the book progresses, giving good reading practice.

My major complaint with the book is that it is too full of pictures. Some of the vocabulary is difficult to decipher because no English equivalent is given, just a picture. In addition, the text has a disorganized feel owing to the large number of pictures and sidebars.

Overall, this is a solid choice of textbook for a course, but I would not recommend it for self-study.

I've owned this book and the 6th edition; the only difference there was modernizing photos and translations.
I found the book very useful, but I would like to see more transitions as one subject in a chapter changes to the next subject. If you have an instructor who transitions well, you won't have any problems. Going it alone, however, leaves you spending unnecessary time figuring out how to get from A to B. Still, especially if you have the workbook--you NEED the workbook no matter what--you'll learn well.
I'm thrilled to finally be able to get full access to a website with a used book--it's my favorite part of the whole thing!

I picked this up to learn Spanish over the summer. I'm pretty good with languages but if my girlfriend didn't speak Spanish as a native, it'd be a little frustrating to learn from only the book.

It's a decent book and the presentations and practice sentences are well organized. My criticism is that I am often reading words that are not defined in the book and without a native speaker next to me I wouldn't know what I was reading. Of course a Spanish/English dictionary would fix this problem, I was use to language texts that provided everything you needed in the book when I learned Japanese.

I am a Spanish instructor and find this book to be terribly outdated and traditional. It is poorly organized and doesn't promote real communication in the target language. I also find the vocabulary to be incredibly poor for a college-level text.

A book used by my daughter for 9th grade Spanish. Helpful and well used. Useful in more advanced Spanish classes.

I learned to speak Spanish with this book over the course of 4 years beginning in 2002 in junior college. Granted, I did attend classes 5 days a week for that entire time, but even so this is a good book for learning the grammar, etc. Definitely take a course as well and go on some trips where you have to speak.

There was no packing in the box, and when the box arrived it was crushed, and the book has major damage to the hard cover.