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Rating: 
Summary: Excellent text to learn Spanish with.
Review: I didn't give it 5 stars because I believe the first thing that should have been covered is the alphabet - which is in chapter/section 2 I believe. We learned English by learning the alphabet first, just as we should with Spanish. Other than that, this book is great! Especially if you get it with the two CD's that go with new editions. They really helped me. I definitely recommend this book.
Rating: 
Summary: AChhh!!!
Review: The WORST Spanish textbook I have ever used! The layout is nice, but the exercises, in most cases, do not even relate to the material being covered in that particular tema. The accompanying workbook is even worse. I have never seen a language book offer exercises before lessons at the beginning of a chapter, and this one does it before nearly all. If you need this for a class, be ready to deal with some headaches.
Rating: 
Summary: Not particularly great
Review: This textbook introduces the fundamentals of the Spanish language to students. Chapters give instructions on the grammar of the Spanish language especially verb tenses (indicative, preterit, imperfect, subjunctive, present progressive, future, conditional, and imperfect subjunctive). The book also includes information about a number of Spanish speaking countries.Truthfully, I did not really find this book that helpful, at least not for studying. The book exercises may help when conversing in class, but are pretty pointless if preformed alone. I did not feel that the book did a great job of teaching the grammar either. It stuck certain grammatical topics in the middle of chapters instead of introducing them at the forefront which I think would have been better. It did little to illustrate verb conjugation (I recommend using 501 Spanish verbs to help). More English directions would also have helped a little. The cultural sections in the book were informative, but I would rather have the book focus more on the Spanish language instead. The two extras that probably will come with the book's package are the Temas CD-rom and workbook. The workbook really wasn't that bad and I think helped me at least a little. It is actually better to get a teacher who makes you do the workbook because these exercises do help (some teachers basically ignore the workbook and expect you to do it on your own). The only problem that I had with it was that it often included Spanish words that were not explained in the text. The CD-rom I felt was very helpful. It was especially useful for preparing for listening portions of exams and includes several helpful exercises. Basically, Temas is not horrible but not great. It is a bit too bare-bones in its teaching style to be a great textbook.
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