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Title: Mastering Spanish: Level 2 (Foreign Service Institute) by Mastering ISBN: 0-8120-7919-1 Publisher: Barrons Educational Audio Pub. Date: September, 1992 Format: Audio Cassette Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $79.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.64 (14 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Excellent for Fluency but I wouldnt recommend for a beginner
Comment: I bought the cassette version and found it to be the best investment in Spanish that I've made. As stated in some of the other reviews, there isn't a lot of English spoken (one of the features I was looking for). I've had 4 years of Spanish prior to this (but it's been about 7 years since my last class). I bought the tapes for a trip to Spain and found them to be incredibly helpful. If you do have a grasp of the spanish language, I would recommend about a year (just the fundimentals of verb tenses), I think that you'll find these tapes the best on the market (yes better than Pimsluer). If you don't have a grasp and are looking for a basic tourist phrases etc, I would recommend ultimate spanish basic intermediate or Pimsleur 1. Some other great additions to this set are 501 Spanish verbs.
Rating: 5
Summary: Hard to Beat
Comment: These cassettes can at first be off-putting: there's almost no English heard, and the Spanish is spoken quickly. But that's the way real Spaniards speak and as your ear gets used to the language as it's really spoken, it is truly exciting. With frequent repetition, your confidence and fluency grow rapidly. These tapes were made by the State Department in the late 50's, and some of the dialogue is hilarious: the men go out to the airforce base to review the bombers, while the women fret about their dresses and clean out the ashtrays. But if some of the social customs are dated, the rigor and clarity of the tapes are classic. For the committed learner, I don't think there's anything out in the market that compares.
I didn't start with Barron's. For the first month or two, I worked with the Learn in Your Car series -- excellent for basics. I switched to this for greater fluency -- and found them to be a superb combination.
Rating: 5
Summary: Excellent follow up to Level I class
Comment: I have both the Level I and Level II Foreign Service Institute courses, and since I've already reviewed in detail how the Level I course works and compared it with the other major offerings out there, such as Michel Thomas's, Berlitz, and Instant Immersion, I'll keep this review brief. If you're interested I refer you to my review of the Level I class which I've also posted on Amazon.
This is basically the advanced course and continues with the same philosophy and structure as the Level I class. It is intended to get you up to speed conversationally as quickly as possible without getting bogged down in too many formal details of the grammar. The approach here is to teach you the grammar by means of many examples of individual spoken sentences and brief conversations and through substitution drills, along with brief discussions of the grammar which are interspersed occasionally between the audio sections. The big, 600+ page workbook allows you to follow along with the native language speakers, which is very helpful also. This contrasts with Michel Thomas's approach, which is just as pricey, but contains no workbook, drills, exercises, or even any memorization at all. It also emphasizes starting with the most basic sentence structures and then building up slowly from there, so that the principles are acquired almost intuitively. I also have the Thomas course and it is excellent as well, and for many people would also be a good choice. I like having the detailed workbook that this course provides, however, so I still have a preference for this one over the Thomas offering. But if you're looking for the most painless approach possible, without the rigors of any formal grammar, the Thomas course might be your best choice.
I have a pretty strong background in structural and comparative grammar and linguistics in general so I don't mind a little formal grammar, but most people don't and just want to get a speaking command of the language as quickly and painlessly as possible. For that purpose this course serves very well and is regarded by many as still the best one out there for that. Someone who masters the 24 tapes in these two courses, which is twice as much material as in most of the other big self-study courses, should have a pretty good command of spoken Spanish and be able to do pretty well conversationally.
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Title: Barron's Mastering Spanish : Level 1 (Foreign Service Institute) by Mastering ISBN: 0812073258 Publisher: Barrons Educational Audio Pub. Date: August, 1988 List Price(USD): $79.95 |
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Title: Mastering Spanish, Level 1 (with Audio CDs) by R. Stockwell, J. Bowen, I. Fuenzalida-Silva ISBN: 0764175971 Publisher: Barrons Educational Series Pub. Date: April, 2003 List Price(USD): $79.95 |
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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): $10.95 |
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Title: Breaking Out of Beginner's Spanish by Joseph J. Keenan ISBN: 029274322X Publisher: Univ of Texas Press Pub. Date: 1994 List Price(USD): $17.95 |
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Title: Advanced Spanish Grammar : A Self-Teaching Guide by Marcial Prado ISBN: 0471134481 Publisher: John Wiley & Sons Pub. Date: January, 1997 List Price(USD): $18.95 |
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