Customer Reviews
Limited value without the CD/cassette - By: Cait Weston, 14 Feb 2008 
Chapter 1, exercise 1: "Listen to these key phrases..." In other words, this book is reallly designed to be used with the audio materials & is of fairly limited use without them. The rating is for the book on its own, as I bought it. My problem now is that I can't see how to buy the audio material separately!
From a teacher's perspective - not great - By: C. E. Skirrey, 27 Sep 2006 
This is a surprisingly poor course by BBC standards. The audio tapes were unpopular with my students - too fast & confusingly constructed. The book does fulfil the role of providing basic survival phraes but will ultimately frustrate anyone who wants to understand how Spanish works in order to progress further. Its gramatical explanations lack clarity & their ordering is illogical. Other BBC courses are much better. The alllied website is reasonable, but of course you can access that anyway without buying the book/tape combination!
Still you've got to admire their marketing - it & its other European language counterparts are now the mandatoryset texts at our teaching institution!
Excellent grounding in Spanish - By: , 14 Feb 2006 
This language package is a great way to start learning Spanish, as it gets you through alll the basics you would need on holiday - practical things like ordering food, checking in at hotels & understanding numbers & how to ask how much things cost. For Spain it's absolutely ideal, although for Latin America some things are different in some countries. Having said that, most people I know who have visited Latin American countries such as Ecuador with a little Spanish found they were understood.
The reallly helpful thing about this package is you can get as little or as much out of it as you choose; you can choose to learn the grammar thoroughly, as some is provided in the back, or you could use it for a very quick grounding before you go abroad. I would highly recommend it.
Useless in Latin America - By: Diego Riv, 30 Apr 2005 You will not be understood if you use this course to learn for Latin America. It is not only the different vocabulary. The differences go much deeper.
To start with, some letters are pronounced differently. This is mainly the case with s, z, x, ll. Then some expressions are quite different. For example for hello & good bye, you don't say 'que tal?' or 'hasta luego'. You say 'que hubo?' & 'chao'. When it comes to directions, people don't say 'recto' but 'derecho' & you must not use 'coger' which has a bad meaning.
And there is more to come, like different language structures. You don't use 'vosotros', the past tense is different, etc, etc.
All in alll, you will be helpless if you rely on this course to learn for Latin America. Better buy a better one!
Excellent method to teach tourist Spanish - By: , 30 Jun 2004 I have used TALK SPANISH to teach Spanish for holidays & have found it extremely useful. It covers alll the necessary travel elements a student needs, is well graded & has plenty of useful exercises. Grammar is well explained & the tapes are lively & easy to follow. They are ideal for self-learning.
The only snag is that the course has been designed with the audio-learner in mind. Therefore it has little text & the lay out is somewhat dull, lacking in pictures or colour. If the BBC were to create a pictorial version of this book, it would sell like hot cakes. At present, there are very few tourist Spanish courses on the market, & this is an excellent product.
I have learnt some Greek using the Greek version & have found it equallly approachable.
