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Rating: 
Summary: An efficient textbook which offers a remarkable CD Rom
Review: I am a College Spanish instructor and I use Intercambios in class. It does what it says. It does not overwhelm the reader with an excessive amount of vocabulary or with activities that in some textbooks are not always easily understandable or identifiable by many learners. For this reason this textbook may not at first glance appear very ambitious in terms of scope and content, especially the vocabulary and exercises in the very first lessons, but it provides the essentials in a practical manner which invites communication as it clearly lays the grammatical foundation. The presentation is visually clear, attractive, concise and simple. The way the material is presented is very practical for students who want to get to the core material, for instance before tests. I also found very convincing the way that the "pretérito" is introduced, gradually and early enough to respond to students' needs. Last but certainly not least, Intercambios takes all its meaning with its truly remarkable CD Rom, which is very attractively designed and user-friendly, whether it is used in the classroom or individually. This tool offers a large amount of activities well organized and very useful (video segments, exercises, etc.) For example, speech segments can immediately be translated with a mouse click, and it is very easy to retrace one's steps. This CD Rom has won me over, I hope that it will find a large audience.
Rating: 
Summary: Much Better Texts Even From the Same Publisher
Review: Last summer, I was a student of Spanish in Tampa, Florida at a school that used the 3rd edition of this text. While the text does have a lot of great cultural information and the multimedia program is good as the reviewer above notes, the text is filled with typographical errors and so poorly edited that the publishers should be embarrassed. While you expect an error or two to slip into a first edition, the text we used was the third edition. For example, on page 45 of the text this sentence appears: "Thank you. Oh Enrique is at at (sic) the cafeteria but here's his work." On page 119, Maria is asked if she is cold. She answers, "Si, estan (sic) nevando. Voy a ponerme un sueter." On page 205, the questions are organized in two columns 1,2,5 on the left and 3,4,6 on the right. In a side by side translation of Spanish to English on page 226, the amount listed in currency changes from 60.000 bolivares in Spanish to 15,000 bolivares in English. There are certainly other errors in the text, but you get the idea. These errors do not happen when a book is well edited. The publishers miss some real basics in organizing the text. Since Spanish nouns have gender why not group all masculine and all feminine nouns together on the review pages? Instead they are presented mixed in alphabetical order. The audio CD's that go with the workbook are done in tracks. It would have been a small job to print the track numbers on the pages of the workbook so that you could work on the exercises without guessing what track to begin on. Even failing that, how about putting the track number at the start of each new chapter? I got in the habit of writing them myself into the workbook, but this is so basic that its absence was annoying. . If you are choosing a textbook for Spanish I at the college level, do your students and your college a favor and choose one edited and constructed with much greater care.
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