Spanish Now! Level 1 With Audio

I am a self taught student. I am between an A2-B1 level of Spanish and just bought this book. 90% of my studies have been with audio spaced repetition and very little reading and writing exercises, so I bought this book to add some foundational re-enforcement. The good points in the book are that there are plenty worksheets and the reading exercises are good. I read them out loud and try to read quickly without hesitation. The exercises are easy for me, but at the level where I can read them and not be crutched with translating from english so much in my head. It’s been great re-enforcement for me.

The CD is not much value in that I don’t have a CD player. What’s with a CD in 2015? Really? My kids don’t even know what a CD is. A good website with MP3 downloads and maybe some interactive online work as a bonus would be value, but the publishers probably have a bunch of seniors working on this project if they think a CD in 2015 is a good idea.

I believe that if you are a beginning student looking for self study, this is not going to be an easy book, not impossible either. It jumps into a lot of vocabulary very quickly. It is probably okay with a Teacher, but still I think beginners are better off talking and listening more than wasting time reading and writing. If your goal is to talk to others in a new language, making your mouth and brain communicate is the same as training for a marathon. You have to run to train for a marathon and you have to talk out loud to learn how to speak a new language. You brain functions on a different level thinking and speaking than it does reading and writing. You need to be doing Spanish every day. If you are working with a spaced repetition program like Pimsluer or Learning Spanish Like Crazy this is a good workbook to add re-enforcment and new vocabulary.

Si es serio sobre hacer un esfuerzo aprender español, entonces este libro puede ser parte de su programa del dia. ¡Tiene Suerte y Buen Exito!

Would have given 5/5 but c/d dont work

Use this book second year. Easy way to learn Spanish. I’m very happy.

Not really, but it’s an excellent staged course for those who want to learn Spanish! Good scenarios and logical progression through the language.

I’m using this book for an intro class to Spanish. While the exercises and dialogues are good there are other issues you should be aware of. 1. The are numerous errors in the book. The instructor points them out as we go along as we correct them in our copy of the book. 2. The online audio, once you find it, does not 100% match up to each lesson. There is audio for lessons that don’t exist and missing audio for current edition lessons. This is really frustrating. After 8 editions you would expect this text to be pretty polished.
My work around has been to type up the missing dialogue and record them via an online translation site. It’s not ideal but it works. You need some technical know-how to do this since downloading the translated audio isn’t possible via the site UI. Same goes for downloading the online audio. It’s possible to do but you’ll have be a bit tech savvy.
As for the vocabulary lists, you’re on your own since the online audio does not cover the vocabulary pronunciation. Again, I ended up using Anki with a Text To Speech plug-in to practice pronunciation.
As part of a class you’re going to be ok but you’ll have some extra work to do. For on your own, you’ll have challenges.

Love this book! I had a fear of taking the leap into this book as it is HUGE but the approach it takes to teaching Spanish is AMAZING and you pick it up immediately! Would suggest this book to everyone!