Customer Reviews

Spanish FSI Basic Course Platiquemos Basic Course Level 1 (8 CD's and Book) (Spanish Edition)

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I am writing this review to help anyone who is looking at making a sizable investment(in time and money) in a complete course in Spanish. First, a little about my experience. I have been studying Spanish for a long time, but have only really been studying hard for the past year. I am a self assessed Intermediate Mid on the ACTFL scale, so I really can't comment on the effectiveness of this program if you are a true beginner, although my sense of it is that it is better to have at least some experience before starting.

Now, about Platiquemos. The Foreign Service Institute courses are widely acknowledged as the best complete courses for learning a foreign language. Platiquemos is based on the FSI Spanish course, updated to modern times. The strength of this course is that it covers the entire range of grammatical structures necessary to effectively communicate in the language. I'm really excited about moving through and finishing the complete program. I have completed the Pimsleur Spanish course in its entirety and while it is a very good course in its own right, its coverage of advanced grammar is lacking. I think the best one can achieve with the Pimsleur program is an Intermediate Low, although I would recommend it as a beginners program if you have the money. The other great advantage about this program is that one can learn at his or her own pace, although I would recommend that one practice at least something every day. My current pace is one unit per week(there are 55 units total in 8 levels), doing the lesson once daily M-F and twice daily on the weekends for a total of about 6 hours per unit, which is about what Platiquemos recommends.

Now that I'm finishing up Level One, I think I can comment on some of the what the other reviewers have said. First, one reviewer has noted that the speech on the tapes is considerably slower than "normal" speech. While this is true I think(download some sample tapes from their website and compare it to a novela on Univision), I don't think this has a substantial impact on one's capability to learn. The reason for this is that most of the exercises are sentence length utterances, which minimizes any difference in speech rate.

The same reviewer also notes that the prompts for the variation drills are in English instead of Spanish, which takes a little away from the effectiveness of the drill. I would have to agree with this assessment, but I don't think it's a deal breaker.

Another reviewer stated that there is not enough time between exercises to complete the exercise. I can state that this is definitely not true. For each exercise, I have enough time to respond twice, once before the answer is given and once after the answer is given and before the next exercise begins. The reviewer himself states that he has enough time to think about the correct response, but not enough to speak it. But this is the point of the Platiquemos (and any other) program. The responses have to be automatic and instinctive. If you find yourself thinking about it too much, you need to practice some more.

Another reviewer noted that the tape quality isn't optimum. The tapes do have a cut and paste quality to them. In addition, there are occasional discreptancies between the tape and the book, although there were only maybe about 10 in the entire level.

So in summary, if you are really serious about learning Spanish, this is the course for you. It will be well worth your investment(hint: check out the Platiquemos website).

I am the author of Platiquemos, and I am grateful to Amazon for the opportunity to clarify the technical issues raised by "Happypup". I have given 5 stars only because stars are required--not because I presume to rate my own product.

The primary issue raised by Happypup is the speed of speech on the audio. The decision to moderate the speed was not taken lightly; numerous native Spanish speakers with decades of experience teaching Spanish to English speakers I consulted were unanimous in their opinion that the audio in the original 1957 Foreign Service Institute program (of which Barron's Mastering Spanish is a copy) was unnaturally rapid, and not at all representative of the way Spanish is normally spoken. The audio is not only for comprehension, but also represents models for emulation; trying to mimic the rapid speech of the original by a student could result in serious pronunciation errors which would be very difficult to correct. Correct pronunciation learned at a moderately slow speed can be speeded up; garbled speech resulting from trying to speak to fast is a serious impediment to communication. This was apparently recognized by the authors of the original FSI program--the speech in the second half of the original is markedly slower than in the first half.

Happypup's comparison of the lengths of the "Conversation Stimulus" exercise in Unit 3 is only partially because of slower speech in Platiquemos. Most of the difference is because Platiquemos contains the "Narrative" portion on the audio which was omitted in the original and the Barron's copy. This was done in order to facilitate using the audio in a modern environment, i.e. without having to constantly refer to the text. This was also the reason for including English cues in the "Variation Drills". Unfortunately, there is no other way to make these drills flow smoothly without reference to the text--they are, in fact, a specialized kind of translation drills.

Finally, the use of speakers with "Mexican accents". The Platiquemos audio has 18 voices (the original has 6), 11 of which are Mexicans (the original had no identifiable Mexican voices, 4 of the 6 sound like Caribbean dialect speakers). Not only are about a third of all native speakers of Spanish Mexicans, but the speech of educated Mexicans comes very close to typifying a standard Latin American Spanish. Platiquemos does contain voices from all of the major accent regions of Spanish (Spain, the Caribbean, and the Southern Cone of South America).

I've tried a several courses and books for learning Spanish. Some promise the easy way. As far as I can tell, there is no easy way. It takes a lot of time and discipline to really learn a foreign language. I'm talking about knowing the language well enough to understand movies, TV, and converse with native speakers. Platiquemos is one of the few courses that can take you from the beginning to the end - fluency. It is an 8 level course.

I bought the download edition from the platiquemos-letstalk website. It has over 47 hours of audio, and 1400 pages of text. You cannot finish the course in 47 hours though. It's really a 600 hour course. You'll need to listen to each lesson several times, and that is a good thing. Some course like Pimsleur offer 50 hours of audio, but you only have to listen to lesson once or twice because they're so easy. In the end, they have about 100 hours of instruction. The U.S. Foreign Service Institute created the course Platiquemos is based upon. They train diplomats and other people to be able to communicate professionally in language languages. They have found it takes about 600 hours to learn Spanish if you have effective materials. They actually created a course to teach people with no previous experience in Spanish to communicate well. This is that course, updated with modern typesetting.

Although you'll be glad you have all the text in the course, 90% of the time, you can study away from the written materials. That's great if you commute. The course will teach you how to read though, so you won't be illiterate when your done. You'll be able to speak, read, and understand Spanish.

For most adults, learning a foreign language is no simple task. For those interested in doing so, a serious dedication and commitment to study is essential. This desire and commitment however, often lead to frustration and disillusionment if the program that the student chooses is not designed for the adult learner.

I teach Spanish as a Second Language to adults and have found that Mr. Casteel's program contains all the essential pedagogical elements needed to generate, foster and promote the successful acquisition of Spanish language communicative skills. The course is designed to be methodical and progressive and through a well-structured series of repetition drills, patterns and simulated conversations, the student is guided from one small success to another in learning the grammatical patterns that form language. This constant buildup of successes allows the student to achieve his/her goal to learn to speak Spanish.

In this story line based program, Mr. Casteel effectively combines elements of cultural significance that both instruct and entertain the student. The added dimension of culture enhances the student's ability to understand the true and often hidden meaning behind words. Cultural and historical topics are presented as a sidebar note along with accompanying graphics and through musical clips and renditions on a set of audio CDs.

The CDs form an integral part of the overall program. They are used as reinforcement for at home study for those who use Platiquemos in a classroom situation. They also serve as the "language facilitator" for those who prefer independent study. New phrases and sentences are introduced to the student in a reversed repetitive pattern that allows the student to concentrate and focus on the new material presented while practicing words and structures previously mastered. The audio quality and the variety of voices used in the recordings help the student to train his/her ear to capture the varying nuances in pronunciation.

I have enjoyed using Platiquemos and my students sing its praises when they find that they can speak and understand Spanish at the end of this Level I. It gives them the confidence they need to move on to the next level and feel that they will be successful and not waste their money or their time. Thank you Mr. Casteel for a truly results oriented and proven language learning program.

I would agree with all of the preceding (positive) reviews and so will not go into what Platiquemos does right in detail (it's already been said!) - but there is another side to this which I would like to share and is why I have given this product 3 stars. There is no doubt that the FSI approach and system used here is both effective and time honored. There is also no doubt that the original FSI program is outdated, sometimes poor audio, boring book and speakers fast and hard to differentiate [available on amazon as Barrons levels 1 and 2 and levels 3 and 4 at multilingualbooks or audio forum (I have no connection to any of these companies other than having occasionally purchased their products) ].

Platiquemos does solve some of these problems by redoing all of the dialogs using male and female instructors from the Cuernacava School of languages in Mexico. This means the audio recordings are new and higher quality. It allows them to re-cast "juan" from the original as "juanita" and el senor White as Ms Smith. This is good as the increased use of female voices make the dialogs easier to follow as the difference between the male and female participants is easier to note than the old FSI where two similar sounding males spoke to eachother. It also allows a greater diversity of speakers, although all seem to have Mexican accents, so I don't think this is a strong point. The big problem I have is that after using the old FSI for levels 1 and 2 I then tried to continue for units 30-55 (Platiquemos levels 5-8) but they spoke TOO SLOW! I know this sounds contradictory but the old FSI tapes, while fast and hard to follow enabled me to understand *normal* speech at *normal* speeds. After a short time with Platiquemos I felt like my ability to follow at normal speeds was going backwards as it was training/practising my ear to only be able to follow at an artificially slow one. Yes, it *does* make learning and getting through the lesson easier, but I want to learn to speak and listen, and I felt the FSI did a much better job of this even though it was harder. Sometimes you get what you pay for (in this case in effort not necessarily dollars). I timed the part 3 dialogue in FSI - 33 seconds. I timed the *same* dialogue in platiquemos - 1 minute 8seconds - HALF THE SPEED! If you want to hear for yourself you can download the mp3s from the "platiquemos let's talk" homepage.

The other aspect they have changed is either a benefit or a backward step depending on your perspective. For many of the variation drills rather than just having the Spanish as the old FSI had it also has the English on the tape (which before you had to refer back through the book for). This makes the new Platequimos easier to use *without* a book ie in the car or something, but it has the disadvantage that it changes it from a variation drill to a translation drill - and there are already plenty of translation drills! You need both and adding the english has destroyed the effectiveness of the variation drills.

Overall, this is an excellent product and if you have a weak stomach for pushing yourself through lighting quick speech and dull photocopied books buy this over the original FSI course. However, if your aim is to learn to speak and listen to normal spanish speech - buy the old FSI version. Check out the mp3s on the platiquemos homepage and form your own opinion!

The FSI Basic Spanish course is arguably the best and most complete Spanish course in existence. I have never heard of another program that can bring you as close to fluency. Platiquemos is based on the original FSI course and makes improvements on it.

Most of the drills in the course have been expanded. So you get even more variety and more practice than with the original FSI program. Many drills have been slightly reformatted to make them easier to do without the book. This is fantastic! Now you can do the drills while your hands and eyes are occupied with other things. The conversation stimuli at the end of each chapter have been reformatted as translation drills giving you still more material to practice. There are three times as many voices than in the original audio. The original FSI book was unreadable but has been completely rewritten in the Platiquemos version. And as if that's not enough, Platiquemos is cheaper than most other versions of the FSI program. You can purchase a downloadable, all-digital version from the product website.

If you're choosing between Pimsleur and Platiquemos, Pimsleur is a wonderful and painless introduction to the language. But even with 100 lessons, Pimsleur is still only an introduction. While it's not quite as painless as Pimsleur, Platiquemos will have ideas rolling off your tongue in a way that Pimsleur just can't. Platiquemos will take you much farther into the language and much closer to fluency. Platiquemos will also teach you to read, which is something that Pimsleur doesn't really do. Where Pimsleur takes you on a friendly guided tour of the language, Platiquemos burns it into your cerebral cortex. If you have trouble getting started with Platiquemos, I'd recommend doing the Pimsleur short course first.

"The Thinker" who compares Platiquemos to the Michael Thomas course just doesn't get it. The Michael Thomas program is only eight hours and doesn't have a single native speaker. Platiquemos includes about 48 hours of audio, comes with a 1400 page book, and has 17 native speakers. It's like comparing Volkswagens and Boeings. And think again, Platiquemos does indeed have a money-back guarantee.

If you are serious about learning Spanish, this is the course to buy.

My huband and I got this course to prepare for a trip to Mexico - our goal wasn't to become fluent, but to pick up enough to enjoy our month long stay in San Miguel de Allende. We studied for about an hour a day for nearly a month -(skipping some days of course!) and I was amazed at the results. Both of us had high school/college Spanish - which probably helped a lot - but we found that the Platiquemos course gave us enough structure to help us remember many of the verbs, nouns, adjectives, and prepositions that make up daily speech. Mr. Casteel mentions how this course is for people who really need to learn to speak immediately, and I think he is right. I found that learning a smaller amount of grammar from a variety of angles helped me remember more than other courses that tried to teach me everything under the sun right off the bat.

The course takes you through all the basics and helps you to remember them through drills. Also, by listening to the native speakers in the audio program, we felt more comfortable when we got off of the plane in Guanajuato, where we arrived. If you are a serious Spanish student you will want to consider the other levels of the course - I think there are 7 or 8 total - but this is a nice way to begin a self teaching program.

I've used the FSI materials for French and Spanish, and wished to try the updated version of Spanish in Platiquemos. On the plus side, it's probably good to have more native speakers and countries of origin; some of the material and vocabulary has been updated; I personally like the English in places, which means I don't have to refer to the book so much. And the book is much more readable than the FSI/Barron's editions.

On the negative side, one niggling criticism, and one more serious. First, the audio is apparently patched together from the original FSI tapes and later multiple recording sessions. Tape noise, audio ambience (echo and tonal quality), and voice levels vary from one speaker's recording to another within the same excercise, and this is somewhat distracting.

More seriously for me, not a previous reviewer's complaint about the speech being too slow, but rather the intervals between utterances being too short. Even for lessons I know well from the FSI material, I find that I do not have time to utter a response. That is, in a variation drill first a model is given, then you should have time to repeat the phrase at the same speed as the speaker, next the variation keyword is spoken. You should have time to form and utter the response, then the answer is given, and finally you should have time to repeat it before the next drill item. None of these intervals is long enough. At the point where I would naturally begin speaking, the next utterance on the tape has already begun. In learning the dialogue, explosively repeating a phrase immediately after the native speaker, the speaker starts the next repetition before I can finish speaking.

The entire value of this method, to me, is in speaking each utterance aloud, and being forced to repeatedly solve small problems in the target language, at a much higher rate than say in a classroom situation. But the lack of time for response turns this into a passive exercise. I may have time to mentally form a response, but hardly ever to speak it.

In my opinion, this is the absolute best way to learn Spanish on one's own. I've taken several Spanish classes in college, but they don't even come close to the effectiveness of this course. The course first starts with a strong emphasis on correct pronouniation, and the course has a tremendous amount of audio featuring native speakers who don't slow down when they talk (difficult at first, but once you get the hang of it, you'll understand people on the street). The course is designed for you to make quick responses to questions without thinking; Spanish literally will jump from your mouth if you follow the methods of the course. Right now, I'm about 3/5 finished with the entire program (it has 55 levels total), and my Spanish has made a quantum leap in the very brief time that I've been studying it. It's so much easier to talk to native speakers now, and I can only imagine how much better I'll be once I completely finish. Frankly, I'm not going to bother wasting my time taking any more Spanish classes in college, as they are so ineffecient compared to this method. Platiquemos does require a lot of work, but you will see results. In my opinion, outside of immersion in a Spanish speaking country, nothing comes close to Platiquemos.

I have used the Platiquemos course to teach Spanish levels 1 through 3 for the last couple of years and have found it to be very complete. After a little practice I find that I spend very little additional time preparing my classes. My students have all progressed very well and most plan to continue through additional levels of the course. Vocabulary and grammar from each unit are repeated and reviewed at intervals through all subsequent units and levels so that students don't lose old knowledge as they acquire new. I allocate 45 hours of class time to each level which typically gives me plenty of time for review and additional activities. Most students with no prior language background become "conversational" by the end of level 2. I highly recommend this course for serious students.