Customer Reviews

Vistas: Introduccion a la lengua espanola - Student Edition

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

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!

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This book is bought on the back of poor students for around 200 dollars, and is obsolete as soon as the purchase is completed.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.

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!!!

Section 133 of the Higher Education Opportunity Act took effect in July, 2010. It requires textbook publishers to offer "unbundled" copies of textbooks and supplemental material.

You can buy a used copy of a VHL textbook here at Amazon and then go to the Web site store (VHLDirect.com) and purchase the access codes, lab manuals, separately.

For example, if you find a used copy for $10 you can buy supersite access for $55 and spend just $65 instead of $139.

This is true for ANY bundled textbooks - like those bundled MyMathLab books. You can buy/rent/borrow the textbook and purchase standalone access to the site if your instructor requires it.

Also under Section 133, your college bookstore is REQUIRED to share the ISBN codes for assigned textbooks when you sign up for the class. You can quickly check to see that one section's instructor requires a $200 bundle and another section only requires a $58 textbook.

All students should use this information to push back on usurious textbook prices and bundles.

This textbook (and its supplemental materials) are required for my Spanish 1 course at The Evergreen State College. The book and workbook are written clearly and easy to understand. However, I've heard enough from my classmates to agree with "A Customer." It would be better to buy this textbook as a set from the website [...] or from your university bookstore. Also the website doubles as a study/assignment center but the site is still being worked on so if you have problems, find another computer!

My school at Mississippi State University used the Vistas textbook from Spanish 1-4. I think this book does a good job of presenting the information in ways that some other Spanish textbooks don't. There are 18 chapters in it. There is even a review section towards the end that reviews the subjunctive. There are a few flaws to this book. One of which is that for some chapters, the authors didn't include enough vocabulary for some of the common/obvious things that people want to know how to say. Other than that, this book is a great one.

This textbook is the new way schools are trying to farm out language studies instead of paying teachers to teach. My class was guided by a TA and all learning was to be taught via the horrible book and even more atrocious online curriculum. The homework is online and well over half the time you type in the correct word, it will tell you you got it wrong creating an unbelievably confusing situation. My class of 30 was down to 11 with 3 weeks left in the semester. It is also designed so that you can't return it. The book come with a pass code that can only be used once thus making your book useless at the end of the semester unless you buy a new passcode. My school ripped me off $170 for this piece of garbage and offered me $5 for it back.

Bought book listed under NEW. NEW books include a code for the internet portion of the class. Seller did state book was paper back with three hole punch but no mention that code not included - all used books stated whether included or not. Price was less than other new, but thought I was paying less for the style of book, not missing code. Seller offered return if unopened, but we had to open to find that code was not included.

I recieved the book in a very impressive time... I was shocked to see the state of the book though. The book, of cousre, is still useable but it is kind of falling apart. The binding is very weak and the corners of the cover are bent... Just not what I expected.

This is by far the worst fleecing I have ever experienced as a student. I suppose math and science majors are used to this type of extortion, but as a history major this was the first textbook that made me seriously consider dropping the class, ne, dropping out of college. this college textbook racket has existed for decades and until the student and professors work together to stop this mindless price gouging, then it will continue to be that way. Would you ever pay over 100 dollars for a dvd? A cd? a spanish book? I wonder if the scumbags who publish this book sleep well at night. Well, maybe if there's a God he'll allow these pirates to pass this mortal coil from the safety of sleep, cause if I ever meet one...boy howdy.