Vistas: Introduccion a la lengua espanola - Student Edition [Hardcover]

Jose A. Blanco (Author), Philip Redwine Donley (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 160007104X | ISBN-13: 978-1600071041 | Publication Date: January 1, 2007 | Edition: 3

hardcover

Product Details

• Hardcover: 638 pages
• Publisher: Vista Higher Learning; 3 edition (January 1, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 160007104X
• ISBN-13: 978-1600071041
• Product Dimensions: 10.4 x 8.8 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (28 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,026 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #4 in Books > Education & Reference > Foreign Language Nonfiction > Spanish
  • #6 in Books > Education & Reference > Foreign Languages > Spanish
  • #6 in Books > Education & Reference > Foreign Languages > Instruction > Spanish

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

166 of 175 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars READ THIS BEFORE BUYING, January 17, 2008

By 

Derek Husband "DHub" (California) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Vistas: Introduccion a la lengua espanola - Student Edition (Hardcover)

I was trying to be smart about my book buying, which I generally do very well for myself. However with this book and its publisher there is a very big problem. This book is designed so that you have to buy it new! Save for the fact you want to read it for entertainment or leisure purposes. They do this by having the student (assuming of course anyone who buys this textbook is a student), require not only a pass code, but also a work manual, DVD, and a pocketbook dictionary. Which by now you may have guessed most of which is usable only once! If you are to Google the Vista site directly you can find the items that come packaged new separately. But by the time you add it together you were better off just buying it new from the college bookstore or the vhldirect site! So save yourself time,headaches,and money and do not buy this textbook used , unless you just want something to read for leisure. I hope this helps!

51 of 58 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Scum Publisher...., April 22, 2009

By 

Robert Farris (Sacramento, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Vistas: Introduccion a la lengua espanola - Student Edition (Hardcover)

Do we really need a "revised" book for introductory Spanish every year? What are the revolutionary changes that are happening in the language that require American high school/college kids to take notice? Last time I checked, the past and future tense aren't being changed often.

Additionally, does the 200 dollar price tag justify a group of generally ridiculous on-line exercises? And here, I thought the technological advertising gimmick of a CD+Website had died in the late 90s, after it was proven utterly worthless.

This book is bought on the back of poor students for around 200 dollars, and is obsolete as soon as the purchase is completed. I will be recouping about 10% of the original purchase price, which only highlights the massive profit that the publisher must make from pillaging student's savings accounts.

34 of 41 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Bad book, bad website, bad publisher!!, November 26, 2009

By 

Computerdude1032 (St. Paul, MN) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Vistas: Introduccion a la lengua espanola - Student Edition (Hardcover)

First off, this is the worst spanish book I've ever used. Vocab words tend to push their political agendas more than what you'll actually need to know if you wanted to use your Spanish to communicate. (I can't imagine you'll be having too many conversations in Spanish about drug addicts, alcoholics, acid rain, government reform, global warming, air pollution, environmental protection, or the many other vocabulary words they have decided to include, rather than ones that may actually be useful in your life.)

Secondly, when vocab is taught they have some words listed next to their english translation (which is good), but for other words they have a word pointing to something on a drawing. The problem with that is simply that the drawings in this book are AWFUL!! Is the arrow pointing to a man or woman? Who knows! Is the arrow pointing to the grass or to a rock? Who knows! Is that a human or a one-eyed alien? Who knows!! Some of the book questions ask things like "what is the man doing," but the drawings are so bad that you legitimately can't tell which is the man vs. which is the woman!! So then once you've discovered that you don't know what half the vocab words mean, you'll be glad to know that when a new grammar concept is taught, the examples decide to feature the new vocab extensively, so instead of struggling to understand the new verb tense, you'll be struggling to understand the verb tense and the words used in the example sentences. Couldn't be worse!!

Also, new grammar concepts are usually "taught" in 1-2 sentences, and will use English words that you've never even heard of (instead of saying "present tense," they'll bust out some 20 letter word that apparently also means present tense, but you've never heard of, and once again you'll be left struggling with something that you aren't supposed to struggle with).

Basically, if you get stuck using this garbage book, you better hope you have a good professor to go along with it, because you CANNOT learn spanish out of this book.

To top everything off, the website where you'll find most the example problems is AWFUL! You may type a sentence, forgetting a period at the end, and all you'll get is some dude yelling "¡AYYY NO!" out of your speakers, with no indication of what you did wrong (so you'll re-do the whole thing 10 times before you realize you had it right the first time, and in the process you'll have forgotten the correct way to do the verb tense.

To sum things up, this book was clearly designed by somebody who doesn't understand how second languages are learned. If any professors are reading this, I strongly encourage you to do your students a favor and pick one of the many other spanish books on the market. All 30 people in my class (and the professor), are constantly complaining about how terrible the book is, so PLEASE avoid it at all costs!!!