Spanish Level Two: Learn In Your Car

Rating:
Summary: Spanish by natural repetition instead of gramatical study
Review: An excellent study/review tape. I have purchased three sets of cassettes to reveiw my spanish and this was my favorite.

Note however that I already speak spanish at a lower intermediate level. I lived in Colombia for over two years. I mainly bought this cassette to increase my vocabulry during time otherwise wasted in my car. It was an excellent tool for this.

If you already speack Spanish and wish to improve I would give this a 5 star rating. If you are trying to learn Spanish... then you will need to judge for yourself (thus I gave a 4 star rating as it might not be as perfect for that) Good Luck! (Buena Suerte)

Rating:
Summary: Buy something else!
Review: I have been buying many different cd packages to learn Spanish.. and I have to say that most of them are ok.. this one is terrible. It is boring. It offers no memorization techniques. All it is is listen and repeat! The person that does the repeating doesn't even do it slowly.

For something really good.. try Michel Thomas.. the audio quality isn't the best.. but darn, if that man doesn't make your remember how to say things in Spanish. It is really much much better.

Rating:
Summary: Buy something else!
Review: I have been buying many different cd packages to learn Spanish.. and I have to say that most of them are ok.. this one is terrible. It is boring. It offers no memorization techniques. All it is is listen and repeat! The person that does the repeating doesn't even do it slowly.

For something really good.. try Michel Thomas.. the audio quality isn't the best.. but darn, if that man doesn't make your remember how to say things in Spanish. It is really much much better.

Rating:
Summary: Learn In Your Car Spanish; Raymond & Ramirez
Review: I'm a third of the way through Level 2 and am just starting to be able to construct/speak with useful sentences and understand very basic Spanish if they talk slow. My reading is much better. I do not enjoy a natural talent for languages - especially in listening comprehension. I have tried all sorts of media aids, including interactive CD ROMS and several tapes and books. First off I think it is neccesary to learn a language by engaging as many of the faculties of your mind as possible so I do not subsribe to this or any CD as the sole means of learning the language. Most people will need to do a lot of reading, memorization, listen to Spanish TV shows/movies, writing excercises and if they are lucky some interaction with Spanish speaking people. Find a good text book as the backbone of your studies. Also you will not learn the language in 30 days with this or any other aid - think in terms of months and years depending on how well you want to know the language. Probab!ly 6-12 months and 6 hours a week for a very basic but functional level of conversational skill. So I recommend a good book, something fun and not too academic - for example: Asi Es by Nancy Levy-Konesky, Karren Daggett (this also includes an audio CD - but it is completely inadequate. They have additonal audio available but it is difficult to find and is expensive - it was meant for school language labs).

For a supplement to the main structure of your course work these CDs are the best audio aid I have come across, particularly assuming that this work will be done in your car where you will not be able to look at a book. The CD is not a massive vocabulary dump without sufficient practice in gramatical structure (such as The Complete Idiots Guide to Learning Spanish on Your Own), rather it slowly builds vocabulary as it trains you to compose simple phrases and sentences, not by gramatical rules, by example. Nor does it have any superfluous introductions to each lesson,! "amusing" anecdotes or explanations that will drive you absolutely nuts when you have to play the CD tracks repeatedly to learn the Spanish - another fault of the Idiots Guide. The recordings are done in a studio with good pronunciation so you can clearly hear the words.

It comes with a small book which has the printed dialogue and very succinct explanation of the grammar as it is introduced. You will only need to refer to it occasionally. The Spanish and English are on seperate tracks so you can alternately test your listening comprehension and speaking by turning down the left or right speaker.

The 3 levels of the course will give you all the basic elements of the language so it is indeed a reasonably comprehensive audio course in basic Spanish. The total vocabulary is limited but you will pick up many more words in a text you should buy and will get lots of practice from these CDs putting together properly structured sentences. It can only help to listen to !other audio aids (Idiot's Guide tape does have lots of vocabulary) to add variety of structure, accents and rhythm, but I recommend this as the main audio learning tool.

Note: Level 2 begins with the Preterite tense, Level 1 ended with a brief intro to the preterite. You should buy Level 2 and 3 at the same time because at this point you may need to skip between Levels to use the material that complements a text you may also be using.

Rating:
Summary: Highly Recommended
Review: This is quite a useful early-intermediate collection with some advances in vocabulary and verb tenses beyond the ordinary beginner's course.

One of the best features is that English is on one channel and Spanish is on the other. In other words if you like "immersion" then you can hear all-Spanish with no English.

On the CD set the voices are clear and the sound quality is excellent. Timing of the phrases is adequate. Repetition of language items is adequate.

Very happily there is no extraneous music other than chimes to mark sections. Chimes are not too frequent. You can play your own music if you like.

Minus a half star for the booklet which is tiny, odd-sized, and printed in somewhat small type. But it does contain the transcript. Helpfully, important language items are underlined. There is no index.