Como Se Dice

Rating:
Summary: Como se dice?
Review: I found this book very helpful in learning Spanish. I would recommend purchasing a good Spanish/English dictionary and the companion work book @tapes.

Rating:
Summary: Great start!
Review: I have used COMO SE DICE as a text book to teach Spanish in a military college. COMO SE DICE has concise, clear explanations for every Grammar subject, as well as excellent exercises for the students to practice. Written by two Latin American professors and one Spanish professor, useful expressions and vocabulary are both, from the old "Motherland", and the new Hispanic world. I highly recommend it.

Rating:
Summary: A Student View: Good textbook, Boring Workbk and Lab Manual
Review: It is a very compact course for beginners, and is not intended for self-study. A good thing is that you will be equipped with lots of vocabularies after the course, and the grammer point is clear. A bad thing is that you will still confused how to conjugate peterit, imperfect, subjuctive, conditional, future, imperfect subjuctive etc after the course, because all of these grammers are taught in 6 or 7 chapters. Anyway, the textbook worths five stars because I feel I learnt a lot about Spanish in 8 months. It is a very demanding course if you don't have foundation of any Latin-based language.

The Workbook and Lab Manual uh... very very boring. It is a typical workbook, and is not interactive. I have tried another Lab Manual, like "Puntos de Partida" (if I spell it right) and found that it is much more interesting and interactive. There are more exercises in "Puntos" lab Manual than "Como" Lab Manual. And basically a large part of "Como" Lab Manual is to follow the recordings and read out the texts in the textbook. And actually these recordings are the same as those provided in the student cassette. (I feel cheated!)

Overall, the textbook is good but the Workbook and Lab Manual is not satisfactory.

Rating:
Summary: A Student View: Good textbook, Boring Workbk and Lab Manual
Review: It is a very compact course for beginners, and is not intended for self-study. A good thing is that you will be equipped with lots of vocabularies after the course, and the grammer point is clear. A bad thing is that you will still confused how to conjugate peterit, imperfect, subjuctive, conditional, future, imperfect subjuctive etc after the course, because all of these grammers are taught in 6 or 7 chapters. Anyway, the textbook worths five stars because I feel I learnt a lot about Spanish in 8 months. It is a very demanding course if you don't have foundation of any Latin-based language.

The Workbook and Lab Manual uh... very very boring. It is a typical workbook, and is not interactive. I have tried another Lab Manual, like "Puntos de Partida" (if I spell it right) and found that it is much more interesting and interactive. There are more exercises in "Puntos" lab Manual than "Como" Lab Manual. And basically a large part of "Como" Lab Manual is to follow the recordings and read out the texts in the textbook. And actually these recordings are the same as those provided in the student cassette. (I feel cheated!)

Overall, the textbook is good but the Workbook and Lab Manual is not satisfactory.