22 of 27 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Not useful for building vocabulary or sentence flexibility, June 2, 2007
I bought this book because I thought it would be helpful. After taking it home and reading it, I didn't like it at all.
This book gives you full sentences, with full translation, and pronunciation guide. It doesn't break it down into translating the sentence word by word.
For example:
No, es muy facil.
No, ehs mooy fah seel.
No, it's very easy.
So in order to say the sentence, you have to remember how to say the entire sentence. They do not translate each word. So let's say you couldn't remember the whole sentence but you could only remember the one word, the word for easy. It would be helpful to know the Spanish word for 'easy' was but this book only tells you the full sentence.
See the picture above.
In addition, the sentences are NOT flexible. You should be able to use the sentence in a variety of ways and build up your vocabulary and sentence usage. For example, they could also write: No, its very ... difficult, big, small, blue, hot, etc.
I thought of keeping it and buying another one. But why keep the book if I didn't even like it. In fact, I found a better one "Rick Steves' Spanish Phrase Book and Dictionary" and was even cheaper!
Rick Steves' Spanish book, like many others I saw at the bookstore, had a brief built-in Spanish-English and English-Spanish dictionary in the back of the book. Very helpful!
This Spanish phrases for Dummies had NO dictionary in the back. As you can see from the picture above, it would only give you a short vocabulary list of maybe 5 or 10 "words to know".
Therefore, this book is NOT helpful for learning vocabulary or expanding your sentence variation. It's just that, Spanish phrases.
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10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
long-distance learning, March 3, 2006
My 11-year-old granddaughter and I each have this book, which we use to study Spanish together...she in another state several hundred miles from me...via e-mail. We are just beginners, and this book is ideal for looking up simple phrases to exchange. It is such a neat way to share a learning experience with a loved grandchild!
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