It's a 13 hour audiobook and £15 on Audible but I bought it with my monthly credit so it cost me about £8
I'm using this as my primary learning method before hopefully moving onto something else after, so I am a beginner.
My overall impressions are very good. He has two speakers speaking Spanish, a guy from Latin America and a woman from Spain so you can hear the small differences in speech. This also meant that you get to hear each translation twice which was helpful.
The main topics covered were:
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Using English words ending in -ion to make Spanish words
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Verbs and how to say you have done something e.g. he visitado for I visited
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Various pronouns (yo, usted, el, ella, ell@s, nosotros, vosotros) and how to conjugate them with verbs
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Articles such as un, una, la, el, las, los
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Past tense with verbs
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Future tense with verbs
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Adding "me", "lo" and "te" onto the end of verbs
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Common verbs like to do, to make, to want, to like, to eat, to pay, to take, to remember, to know, to go, to come, to leave, to have
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How to stess words depending on what they end in
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Words to help when travelling like ticket, train, arrives, to, pay, name, double room, bath, taxi, station
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How to introduce yourself, where you're from and what is your job
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Numbers
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Alphabet
The general structure is like:
1) Paul introduces a concept or word, and tries to relate it to the equivalent in English to help you understand and remember it
2) He says the English word, then the two Spanish speakers say it one after the other
3) He ties it with something you learnt already. If he already taught you that "he" means "I have", and he is now teaching you that "decorar" means to decorate, he will ask how to say "I decorated". Even though he didn't teach this specific phrase you will combine it with earlier knowledge and say "he decorado"
4)At some point later in the middle of another topic, he will ask you again about this and you have to recall it
One defining feature is that he asks you not to strain to remember things, to let yourself forget it if you do it's fine as he'll return to it. And he does, a lot. This is good as you learn something and then later in the chapter and in later chapters it will come up again and each time it stays in your memory longer. I think he went a bit far with this some times and I felt like he was being too cautious and too slow.
I would've preferred if there was more focus on grammar and less on vocabulary. I wasn't overly interested in learning how to say sunstroke, I vomited, fever etc. But I would've loved to have some more indepth instruction on grammar, especially on verb endings. I still get mixed up a bit trying to remember the past and future tenses and how the endings differ. But from what I know most people are the opposite and hate grammar teachings.
Having native speakers was a massive help and I couldn't imagine doing a course that didn't have that, or just had a robot speaking, like Duolingo.
I do think as it went on the speed of the native speakers was too quick and the gaps where you're meant to speak too short, so I set it to x0.75 speed. Even taking into account that you improve as the book goes on, it's still too quick. On this note there's a weird audio glitch where if you pause it on the gap after Paul speaks but before the natives do, when you resume the audio will be glitched when the native speaks which is very annoying. I didn't see this mentioned in the reviews though so maybe it was my phone?
I live with two Spanish speakers (one Spanish, one Colombian) and I've spoken to them a little, they seem impressed with my progress so I think that reflects well on the book!
Overall I'd give it 9/10:
Does anyone know any good courses I could move on to after this? I'm still very much a beginner and find it hard to understand natives speaking at normal speed. I'm thinking of doing a follow up course as well as watching Spanish kids TV or something like so?
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from خوش آمديد | Languagelearning https://ift.tt/31x4dzn
via Learn Online English Speaking
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