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Title: Ultimate Spanish: Advanced by Daniel Holodyk, Rennert Bilingual, Ana Suffredini, Helga Schier, Living Language, Crown ISBN: 0609802534 Publisher: Crown Publishing Group Pub. Date: May, 1998 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $18.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.83
Rating: 2
Summary: CDs Useless.
Comment: I didn't have the patience to listen to all of the CDs, but what I heard was terrible. They repeat every sentance in English, then in Spanish. This is not advanced at all and a jarring way to learning the language. Like other reviewers, I thought this was at most intermediate and not advanced. I'm still looking for a good CD set...
Rating: 3
Summary: Major drawbacks
Comment: I have completed this course as well as Ultimate French and Italian Advanced. Ultimate Spanish is by far the poorest of the three.
Like all of these courses there is, in my opinion, a very major flaw. There is no transcript for the "Learn on the Go" tapes or CD's which comprise half of the audio material. The sentences spoken are often complex and are spoken at normal speed. No matter how many times I listened to some of them, I was unable to decipher them. I also found that for them to be of any value that I had to transcribe the "Learn on the Go" material myself--a very time consuming task. It took me at least a couple of hours per lesson--and I am a very advanced student of languages.
I was sometimes unable to make out the words even with repeated listening. (Of the three courses I was able to transcribe completely the Italian--a language in which I have near native fluency--and even that with difficulty. French stumped me once or twice. But Spanish...)
Another aggravating peculiarity of the course was the continual use of the future subjunctive--so beloved of examination writers of the 1950's but of little practical value. Also, dialectical froms such as "vos" received undue emphasis as did the second personal plural form "vosotros" which is absent in Latin American Spanish.
There were also a number of editing errors. The most egregious one appeared in the "Apuntes" section of chaper 13 wherein it states that the Basques are "direct descendants of the Celts." That is, of course, completely false. The Basques and their language are as far as ever has been determined are totally unrelated to any others.
I would also agree with other reviewers as to the limited value of the business information and the exercises.
All in all, Ultimate Spanish Advanced is not without value as long as one is wary of the many pitfalls. You do get a lot of material for the money--especially if it is bought at the discounts offered by amazon.com and elsewhere.
Rating: 4
Summary: Good content, not enough drills
Comment: I completed 4th year college Spanish 20 years ago. I can understand a lot of what I hear on the radio or see on TV but am slow and clumsy when I have to form sentences on my own. The content of this book is on the right level for me.
Before I started using the book I reviewed grammar with Dorothy Richmond's Practice Makes Perfect: Spanish Verb Tenses. I'm extremely glad I did. The Living Language book has oddly basic grammar information and very little practice. However, the notes to the dialog have good information that I put on flash cards.
The dialogs deal with content that's refreshingly far from the stuff I remember having to read in college. The dialogs take place at a book fair in Argentina, a job interview in Venezuela, a political rally in Guatemala City, and so on. I own my own business & like to follow international news, so I'm interested in the business & political info.
The recorded dialogs expose you to different accents and go at a realistic pace. However, the repetition exercises go too quickly for me. They'll read a line of the dialog that I'm supposed to repeat, but the line is often so long that I forget the end while I'm repeating the beginning.
The book claims it's equivalent to two full years of college-level study. I highly doubt that. There isn't enough practice, unless you make up your own exercises. And it takes me only about an hour to do a lesson, including making my own flashcards, repeating the dialogs twice, and listening to the supplementary info.
Since they're charging a lot, I would have expected the publishers to do a better job at laying out and editing the book. For example, there are no running heads. You can't flip through the book easily and know what lesson you're in. There are also a surprising number of typos.
Even with these complaints, the content is much more varied & interesting than other courses I've seen. So I'm happy.
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Title: Ultimate Spanish: Basic-Intermediate Program (Living Language Ultimate. Basic Intermediate Series (Manual & Cd)) by Irwin Stern ISBN: 060960757X Publisher: Living Language Pub. Date: 03 October, 2000 List Price(USD): $75.00 |
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Title: The Ultimate Spanish Review and Practice by Ronni L. Gordon, David M. Stillman, NTC Publishing Group, NTC ISBN: 0658000756 Publisher: McGraw-Hill/Contemporary Books Pub. Date: 01 September, 1999 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: Practice Makes Perfect: Spanish Pronouns And Prepositions by Dorothy Richmond, Dorthy Richmond ISBN: 0844273112 Publisher: McGraw-Hill/Contemporary Books Pub. Date: 11 April, 1998 List Price(USD): $9.95 |
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Title: Practice Makes Perfect: Spanish Verb Tenses by Dorothy Devney Richmond, Dorothy M. Devney ISBN: 0844273341 Publisher: McGraw-Hill/Contemporary Books Pub. Date: 11 January, 1996 List Price(USD): $9.95 |
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Title: Ultimate Italian: Advanced: Learn at Home and on the Go (Living Language Ultimate. Advanced Series) by Living Language, Michael Lettieri, Salvatore Bancheri, Crown, Maria Iocco, Lucy Di Rosa ISBN: 0517702347 Publisher: Living Language Pub. Date: May, 1998 List Price(USD): $75.00 |
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