Customer Reviews

SmartSpanish CDs Beginner - The smart way to learn spanish (Audio CDs)

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

 

 

Smart Spanish is a collection of interviews with native Spanish speakers (some Latin American, some from Spain), who talk in a natural way about real-life topics -- photojournalism, relocation of a historic house, starting up a baguette business. There is no donde esta the library.

You hear each interview once at normal speed, and the teacher repeats it four or five times at slower speed. The CDs are formatted so you can skip a repetition if you don't need it. Because the interviews are unscripted, grammar points are explained as they come up (first interview jumps straight into past tense -- "This is how it happened..."). For this reason, you may want to have a "basics of Spanish" textbook for reference.

After six weeks with this course I saw a very satisfying improvement in my ability to "hear" phrases and everyday expressions, which seemed a blur before. I've since gone on to Behind The Wheel Spanish, which provides the sentence-building practice needed for speaking as well as understanding.

The real-life quality becomes a source of enjoyment as you go through the interviews -- the unfinished sentences, the noises in the background, the ways people tell their stories. ("You left your children with the coyotes?" gasps the interviewer. In reply, the woman manages to say, without actually saying it, "I'm not a bad mother.") It's like reading Studs Terkel's Working.

I started studying Spanish 20 years ago when I was a union organizer for the Roofers. I took some college correspondence courses. A few years later I left that job to work as a pipefitter.

When I quit organizing, I decided to continue to study Spanish on my own. I bought all the typical educational tapes, the ones where you repeat a
sentence after the voice on the tape. I started reading Spanish nearly every night, to increase my vocabulary. I read one or two Spanish novels a month, depending on how much time I have.

I recently started to work on big, overtime constructions jobs. The past
year I have been on big jobs in Texas, where at least half the workers on
the job speak Spanish. Some speak both English and Spanish, but a lot of the workers speak only Spanish.

I quickly discovered a few things:
One, I had a great Spanish vocabulary. I am like a walking Spanish
dictionary. I'd say I've a bigger vocabulary than 80% of the Spanish
speaking guys on the job. Spanish speaking guys often ask me for the most
correct Spanish word for certain things.
Secondly, I discovered I couldn't understand anything spoken in spanish. There is a lot of slang, but that wasn't the problem. When somebody said something, or when I listened to someone talking on a spanish TV program, a spoken sentence or paragraph sounded like one long, hundred sylable word. It all ran together, I pick up a work here or there, it sounded like it always did before I learned any spanish.
And thirdly, when I spoke spanish to anyone, it was as if I were looking words up in the spanish dictionary and talking, slowly, haltingly.

These cds were like the missing piece of my spanish education. I'm not even done with the first set yet, since I am working 7 days a week, 10 or 12 hours a day. But shortly after starting listening to the cds, playing them over a few times, my listening comprehension increase dramatically. This is really a major turning point for me. The more I can understand by listening,the more spanish idioms and slang I learn. Now, turning on the TV and watching a spanish movie is a learning experience for me. Listening to guystalking at work is a learning experience, since I can understand them. I am now conversing much more on the job, with much more confidence.

Again, I believe your cds were the key. What a great product. I wish I had them years ago. -Greg

I've tried a few other Spanish cd's that focus more on grammar, and they have their uses, but it gets boring just repeating words and phrases in isolation. That's why I really like this system--you hear actual native speakers and really get a feel for the language--it's rhythms, idiosyncrasies, intonation, etc. So it gives me more of an appreciation for the language, keeps me interested, and motivates me to keep on learning.

If you are interested in learning Spanish the way it's spoken in Spain as well as in South America, this is the language program for you.
It is an interesting program that if the steps are followed, that is, variations in hearing and repeating the monologs or dialogs with annotated notes on pronounciation or grammar, one can actually begin to understand what is spoken. The monologs/dialogs are spoken by a variety of people in different professions, and from different countries like Spain, Mexico, which makes the CD much more interesting than most language tapes.
I am really glad I purchased Smart Spanish and look daily to studying Spanish. Having had high school Spanish almost 20 years ago I also feel confident that I will be able to finally speak Spanish soon. I will be comfortable with my Spanish understanding and speaking because of Smart Spanish.

These are audio cds that make you start learning spanish directly on raw material: seven conversations that consist of casual interviews with different people like a diplomat, a chef, etc... The step by step approach to the conversations allows you to totally concentrate on a different task at each step. First you listen. You can read the translation on the booklet provided but the speaker suggests that you just listen. Then you repeat, concentrating on what you hear. Two other steps follow and after that you are given grammatical explainations as you go through the conversation one more time. Then you listen to the real thing. The idea here is to do these exercises until you master the conversations. It's very clever, entertaining and efficient. I have tried the other popular methods where you repeat words and sentences out of context and I got totally tired of it. With smartspanish, I have found a way to learn spanish in the most natural way. I have made a lot of progress and I wholeheartedly recommend this course.

Before going to Spain, I wanted to become familiar with Spanish. As I taught French to foreign students, I knew what I was looking for. For myself as a complete beginner, I looked at several possibilities. I finally selected Smart Spanish as the most likely to get the results I was looking for: constant interaction between me as a student and the teachers, with the ability to repeat and come back to what I had missed, while permitting me to jump ahead. Smart Spanish is by far the best course: it is really inexpensive for what I got from it. When in Barcelona and Zaragoza or San Sebastian I could understand a good deal of what I was listening to even when they spoke so fast with their cigarettes. That made my trip so much more pleasant and I encourage everyone to do the same. This method is the fastest way to understand and speak Spanish! Smart Spanish is excellent from mornings to never ending nights!

I find the Smart Spanish cds to be very helpful to listen to the
language and pay attention to the way the spanish language is spoken. It's a
part of the language learning that is often omitted. To learn Spanish that way
is reassuring. Don't expect to get long lists of words to remember. Here,
you will retain by repeating, a little bit like Pimsleur does, but with the
contact with the real people right away. I found that the advantage of
learning Spanish with dialogs that are not scripted is that I am sure
about the authenticity of the language used.
Helene Cardona, author of The Astonished Universe

Thanks to these CDs, I have developed an ability to listen to Spanish at real speed. It has given me a lot of confidence. It's a must have, especially if you already study Spanish or if you have studied Spanish and you can't have a regular conversation.

This program is highly effective and its aim is NOT to teach each vocabulary word in Spanish. Based on my experience with this product; it assumes the the listener has at least some of the basic vocabulary down. After that, this program accomplishes what few other language programs do: it builds listening comprehension through repeating passages a few times while you participate in pronouncing the words that you hear.

The program is structured in 6 steps per lesson with each lesson being based on an interview of a native spanish speaker talking as if a normal native would (eg: using "umm" or "uh").

Step 1: You HEAR the interview from the program narrator
Step 2: You repeat the interview in segments
Step 3: You repeat the interview with the aid of the script
Step 4: Your repeat the interview with key explanations
Step 5: You are given 2 useful phrases to work on in conversation
Step 6: You hear the actual interview from the native speaker.

In this way the layout of the material programs your mind to automatically learn grammatical skills as well as context without opening a book to study rules. You will instinctively learn how the words work together to convey meaning. I was discouraged at times when I didn't know all the vocabulary, just some bits and pieces. But this is to be expected to attain proficiency in learning any language. I simply looked up some words / phrases that I didn't understand before starting a lesson. After setting up a routine; I found that my listening comprehension skills as well as my handle of the language was much more fluid and harmonious rather than sounding like, well, a beginner. Some people struggle and then 'something clicks' and all the sudden...they reached a new level. This program is the equivalent to having that 'click' in order to jump your spanish to new heights.

The concept behind these CDs is an interesting one, they take real conversations which are several minutes long (which if you are learning a new language seems like a huge amount of time) and deconstruct them so that the listener can make sense of them.

It is not however something that is appropriate for a beginner, this CD set would better be described as intermediate. I'm not an absolute beginner, having studied enough Spanish so the text of the conversations was not way above my level of reading comprehension. I found following the conversations to be interesting but I can't say that I noticed a dramatic improvement in my ability to comprehend spoken Spanish after working through the CDs. I have found other learning materials such as "Behind the Wheel Spanish" to be more useful for me.