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Rating: 
Summary: Not for those who have experience with Spanish
Review: Hi,I've taken three years of High School Spanish and one semester 100 level course at Pace University. I have a good understanding of Spanish Grammar but I wanted a refresher and listening comprehension help so can go on to intermediate and advanced courses. The entire book is separated into chapters that shows you what to say in given situations. There is also a conjugated verb section but I don't see that as any help. The audio CD's are nothing but a native speaker saying the bolded words from the book. My recommendation:
-If you want to learn common phrases for basic conversations. This book will get you by.
-If you want to one day gain fluency use a textbook. I recommend Basic Spanish Grammar by Jarvis Lebredo and Mena-Ayllon. There are so many courses out there and so little money to try them out. Finally I'd like to say good luck to everyone who attempts a new language. Take care!
Rating: 
Summary: Not for the car
Review: I bought this book because of the "lessons" on the CDs, planning to listen and learn in the car. The CDs are entirely Spanish words. No English. No lessons. You can "listen and repeat," but you have no idea of what you are saying. This course might be OK for those who can sit down and read the book. It is not for those who want to listen and learn.
Rating: 
Summary: Good but needs supplementing
Review: I have the five-CD version of this course, so I thought I'd post it here under the three-CD version, since I couldn't find it listed on Amazon. This is considered one of the better all-audio courses. It doesn't seem have the big-name recognition of the well-known Michel Thomas or the Pimsleur audio courses, but it's a fraction of the cost of those, and it's fine for building basic conversation skills without getting too immersed in the grammar. However, I strongly recommend you supplement the audio course with a good grammar book, as it's impossible to really get a good grasp of Spanish without some grounding in the grammar, since there are too many things that are different from English, such as the subjunctive mood, and the fact that the tenses for the conditional and future tense, along with the subjunctive moods, are mostly formed in the Latin manner with suffixation, which has disappeared in English in favor of auxiliaries and modal auxiliaries, although English has it for the basic imperfect and preterite tense. Also, although there are pauses in the audio material so you can try to imitate the native speaker, there's no feedback so you don't really know how well you're doing. I also have the 8-CD Instant Immersion Spanish computer-based course, which has a digital speech analyzer that allows you to record your own pronunciation and compare it to the native speaker's. This is very helpful and I would really recommend, especially if you're studying on your own without a teacher, to get a course that does that in addition to an audio course such as this one. I also have the Complete Spanish Learning Suite in five CD's by Transparent Language, which has similar capabilities. Either of these courses are a good choice for this, and they also include many other multi-media features that are impossible to implement in an audio-only course. I also have a couple of the other more traditional audio courses, such as the Foreign Language Service Institute's Level I and II Spanish classes, and they are also excellent. The big difference between them and the present course is the Living Language course doesn't come with the 650+ page manual that allows you to follow along with the spoken dialog and also explains the grammar as you go along. However, again, the Living Language course is almost one-third the cost of the FLSI course with its 12 tapes and big manual/workbook. I mention the pronunciation issue because of the following problems. Spanish has only two levels of syllabic stress, as opposed to English's four. Also, English does not have the same pattern of what's called minimal vowel contrast under weak stress that Spanish does. These are considered very serious pronunciation errors in Spanish and can result in your not being understood, not just sounding like you have a strong accent. So it's important to correct these errors right from the start. However, the FLSI course is the only one so far (and I've looked at about a dozen Spanish courses) that actually discusses it, although again, it doesn't have the digital speech analyzer since it's a tape or CD-based course like the present one. So overall, a good course for the relatively modest price although you will need the grammar as I said and also the digital-speech capability to aid with the pronunciation.
Rating: 
Summary: A good refresher course
Review: I took about 12 hours of Spanish in college, but haven't used it much in the last 10 years or so and wanted to refresh my memory. The idea was to review the book for a few minutes each day, and then practice pronunciation with the CDs in the car. This course has worked out quite well for that.
Having said that, I offer this caveat: the CDs will not be much help if you do not study the book (the audio is all in Spanish and works on the "total immersion" theory). If you just want to learn a few conversational phrases to "get by" on vacation, there are probably easier ways to do it. If you want to read, write, and speak Spanish properly and grammatically, there are no shortcuts: any effective study method will require time and effort.
If you are an absolute beginner, this course progresses rather quickly and may be hard to keep up with at first. The trick, I think, is to review often and repeat each section as many times as necessary. Be consistent, and don't get discouraged. I am currently using the same system (Living Language Complete Course) to learn Portuguese and French, both of which I am starting as a complete novice. The basic structure of the courses are the same for each language, and the first few chapters (pronunciation rules and very basic vocabulary) will give provide a good foundation for the rest of the course, if you take the time to study them carefully. Buena suerte!
Rating:
Summary: A good refresher course
Review: I took about 12 hours of Spanish in college, but haven't used it much in the last 10 years or so and wanted to refresh my memory. The idea was to review the book for a few minutes each day, and then practice pronunciation with the CDs in the car. This course has worked out quite well for that.
Having said that, I offer this caveat: the CDs will not be much help if you do not study the book (the audio is all in Spanish and works on the "total immersion" theory). If you just want to learn a few conversational phrases to "get by" on vacation, there are probably easier ways to do it. If you want to read, write, and speak Spanish properly and grammatically, there are no shortcuts: any effective study method will require time and effort.
If you are an absolute beginner, this course progresses rather quickly and may be hard to keep up with at first. The trick, I think, is to review often and repeat each section as many times as necessary. Be consistent, and don't get discouraged. I am currently using the same system (Living Language Complete Course) to learn Portuguese and French, both of which I am starting as a complete novice. The basic structure of the courses are the same for each language, and the first few chapters (pronunciation rules and very basic vocabulary) will give provide a good foundation for the rest of the course, if you take the time to study them carefully. Buena suerte!
Rating:
Summary: Good basic to intrmdt course
Review: I'm not sure what all the angst about language learning is all about. If you can't handle a simple language like Spanish, for Pete's sake, don't try anything like Arabic, Korean, Russian, Chinese, Japanese, etc.
I learned @ 3x more Spanish teaching myself than I did in two years of high school study in New Mexico with native speaker/teachers, and this was one of my favorite over-the-counter courses. I say OTC because that's what some of my colleagues and I call anything a civilian can buy.
Some points I'd like to make are; MANY OTC courses claim they are used by or developed by/for US gov personnel working overseas. Pimsleur, Transparent Language, and Rosetta Stone do this.
Also, I read a complaint about not being able to study this LL course while driving or in a car. If you're driving, you shouldn't be involved in any such distracting activity, you should be driving. If you think you're going to learn a foreign language in a few short weeks in a few short easy sessions while driving, talking on the phone, playing on the computer, putting on your make-up or whatever, even a simple language like Spanish, you are sadly mistaken my friend. Like the used by/developed for gov personnel statement, it simply ain't necessarily so.
The LL course is simple, easy, to the point, covers many basic and common grammatical features of Spanish such as the use of present, past and future tenses, and it covers some Latin American expressions as well. This, like all OTC courses, will need supplementation and use in the field to stick to you. I used this course, an all audio course with massive vocab, because Spanish can be learned with rote memorization of vocab unlike Arabic, and Barrons Learn Spanish the Fast and Fun Way for basic vocab.
If you're not a military or college level student linguist and desire some basics to get by and help you get along, I would recommend this program. If you need to get serious, check into a good college language course. And to those students out there, please be more tolerant of OTC products such as these. These aren't going to come close to your college level course, so if you wasted your money buying them and then found out your course at the university or whatever is more thorough, you've only got yourself to blame. Some basic OTC courses are good, and this is one of them.
Rating:
Summary: Review of Spanish Living Language
Review: My only Spanish background was in 7th and 8th grade, yet I found this coursebook helpful enough to advance me out of the Adult Continuing Ed Beginning Spanish, directly into Intermediate. The tapes are worthless, as the previous reviews state, but if you spend a lot of time on the coursebook it will give you a good head start on a self-teaching program. Be warned, though, there are some mistakes in it. I am now in a class, and also using course material from the class along with watching Spanish soap operas and listening to Spanish radio, but I still find myself using this coursebook frequently.
Rating: 
Summary: Don't buy this course
Review: The *lessons* are a joke - If I wanted to hear someone read a list of spanish words for three hours I'd go back to junior high spanish. Spend your money someplace else!
Rating:
Summary: Review of Spanish Living Language
Review: this set is probably good for pronouniation and giving you some phrases to parrot in a tourist situation. but if you are wanting to really learn the language you will need much more. also there are typos and places where the tapes do not match the book. in this price range i would reccomend oxford take off in latin american spanish instead.
Rating:
Summary: for pronounciation only
Review: this set is probably good for pronouniation and giving you some phrases to parrot in a tourist situation. but if you are wanting to really learn the language you will need much more. also there are typos and places where the tapes do not match the book. in this price range i would reccomend oxford take off in latin american spanish instead.
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