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Rating: 
Summary: Immersion is the best way to learn
Review: First some context. I own and use "Just Listen and Learn Spanish" which prepared me for "Just Listen and Learn Spanish Plus." I listen to these tapes while commuting, and read the text during my lunch hour or at home. At the same time I am using a grammar text "Spanish Now" to learn grammar. Listening in my car means I can't follow the directions to stop and do a reading or written exercise. I'm a bit out of sync with the design of the course.Second a statement on immersion. I don't understand most of what I hear. That's how I learned English. That's how I learned French when I lived in an French home. It doesn't mean I'm not learning. Why "Just Listen and Learn Spanish Plus" fills the bill. The tape is 90% Spanish with enough English guidance to keep a general orientation. It ranges from scripted dialogs those not fluent in Spanish to radio programs. You have to tolerate the fact that not everything is translated and you mostly don't understand. But what a pleasure when you go back to something that a few weeks earlier you understood practically none of and you now get 85-90%. This is after less than three months of studying Spanish. I just wish the theme music wasn't so tacky. I've heard it many many times! Also the dictionary is inadequate. But if you can't figure out how to solve that, you're not ready for "Just Listen and Learn"!
Rating: 
Summary: How does this fit in the learning process?
Review: I bought this with the "Just Listen'N Learn" (the beginners level), hoping that it will help me continue the learning process. The first part is not the greatest, but it is a decent introduction (VERY light on grammar, but O'K on useful vocabulary and phrases). The "Plus" though is just plainly hard to use. The is a huge gap between "JLNL" and "JLNL Plus." It may be O'K for someone who already knows Spanish on an intermediate level, but you have to brace yourself for some hurdles: - again, grammar is reduced to minimum, - structures, tenses, etc. are used without an explanation, - a lot of words and phases are never translated, - dialogues get really boring. Overall, just (barely) O'K to enhance skills, but you will need to rely very heavily on other sources to get through it.
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