Spanish: Beginner (Collins Language Revolution) - Books (Tony Buzan, Paperback)

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Customer Reviews of Spanish: Beginner (Collins Language Revolution)

P. Sharpe

23rd October 2008

Useful in helping you learn Spanish words not necessarily phrases
The book is set out in a way where it groups Spanish words in different groups, those very similar to the English so easy to understand, those that are similar to related words so intermediate and the difficult to understand where you really need to use your mind to map the word to a picture that makes you think of the word.

The CD exercises are very repetetive but then that probably is a good thing so that the words you are learning really stick.

It starts off with ordering tapas and drinks. I'd feel fairly comfortable ordering them now.

In other chapters you learn directions and numbers.

Guess we will see if it works when I visit Barcelona later on next month.

POTUS
Glasgow
25th September 2008

Language Buzan Style
Well I have been trying to learn Spanish for the past two years so I approached Tony Buzans latest marketing ploy with a bit of experience. Firstly to the actual layout of the materials - lots of colourful pictures, mind maps galore (I bet that Buzan sends mind maps instead of birthday cards) and even has two audio CDs to accompany this book.

The book is exceptionally easy to follow and it being coupled with an audio CD is a bonus. This is a clear beginner series and it approaches the learning as such. If you want to be able to order your dinner or buy something in Spanish - this book will help you get there.

Its a good beginners series but the problem is that most other language series have already covered the territory. At times the book has the tendency that Buzan has in other books - to prattle on (particularly about Mind Maps).

Its a good tool - but its far from exceptional. I wish I could have drawn up a Mnd Map as a review

tjvf
London, UK
19th September 2008

Fun
I am a big fan of memory techniques, and love languages so this sounded to me like an ideal combination. I first came across Tony Buzan's memory techniques in the 1990's and had mixed success with them then. Back then, his system for memorising stings of numbers and lists of objects (not from this book, but from another of his memory books) worked well for me - though I have always been less keen on the mind maps which took me a long time to draw, and didn't seem to help me to learn anything.
Since then, I have occasionally seen people around me using mind maps to take lecture notes or meeting notes and wondered about giving them another shot. The Collins language revolution was therefore a good opportunity to revisit Tony Buzan's memory techniques and his famous mind maps whilst brushing up on my Spanish.
As I understand the magic of learning with mind maps is in using them to create links and associations between different concepts, ideas or words that you wish to remember. They help to organise your learning, whilst fixing the links that connect the ideas. The more vivid, decorative and fun you make them, the better you can remember them. Once your links are in place, when trying to recall items on your map, it is easy to follow those links back to the information you are trying to remember.
The website that accompanies the course provides background info, and also helps you to work out which memory techniques suit your memory best and base your learning on these.
So what about this course?
It gives you enough of a grounding for a short holiday to Spain/South America and is a starting point for further study. As a refresher course, it is fine, if a little basic. Personally, I found the mind-maps still don't do it for me, but they are only one possibly study aid used in the book, and aren't presented as being an essential part of the course. Other useful memory techniques crop up in the text: story associations to help you remember which nouns are masculine and which are feminine; and there are some fun word associations: I particularly liked the image of a sympathetic waiter serving you a cold beer at the end of a hard day's work with the words "There, better?" (Cer-veza=beer).
One small criticism on this note would be that (from my experience of using word associations to learn Japanese in Heisig's "Remembering the Kanji"), I was surprised that some of the word associations broke what I consider to be the golden rule of selecting memorable associations. For example, the use of proper nouns in your word associations generally makes them very forgettable. The book uses various names of different people and as I tried to fit them all together, I quickly lose track: so, the story with a man called "Callie" another called Derek, and a woman called "Liz Key" together with the highly forgettable phrase "todo recto is directo!" is to my mind a complete waste of time!
If you were trying to demonstrate linking words together in funny ways to make memorable stories, I would say that the examples in the book fall a bit short of the mark. I think with a bit of thought the authors could have done better. However, I don't want to knock the technique, which I think can work very well.
So, all in all, I think this book is a great idea and for the most part very well executed. It would best suit someone looking to get a quick knowledge of Spanish by using some nifty memory tricks. It won't suit the academic learner - no grammar - and those stories won't help you with spelling: but it will quickly get you up to passable tourist level Spanish - with minimal effort... and if you are like me, you'll probably have a lot of fun getting there!

A. Rose

22nd August 2008

Great Package But Only You Can Do The Learning !
The packaging is great to look at and is also very practical - the book and CD's fit neatly back into place. The new `Mind-mapping' is not really new, it's just been given a name (colour coding groups of words). I'm not saying it isn't a good idea if sticking masses of paper with groups of words in different colours makes you learn it better than just reading it from the book, but I personally don't want additional papers everywhere when it's all in the book anyway.

Another of the books methods of learning words is traffic lights where green is `go ahead' - the words are the same or nearly the same in English, amber is `wait and think' - not as close as green words but there will be a connection to English words, and red `stop, think, make a link' - nothing like the English word. One of the examples of red words is orange juice/zumo de naranja - the book says to remember this imagine a sumo wrestler with a bright orange hat, squeezing an enormous orange with his big hands. This is one of the shortest examples in the book and I decided in every example that I couldn't remember the `imagined situation' and why not just remember the two words.

I've tried three other language learning systems with both books and CD's/tapes, and with each one I have the same problems and to be honest this one is no different.
Problem 1. novelty & boredom - novelty because it's new and shiny and feel `I'm really going to do this' but boredom because within minutes I realise that it's not magic and will not just `go into me', it needs learning, and repeating over and over.
Problem 2. construction of sentences, or rather the lack of construction. I find that I pick up lots of words but can't construct a sentence or at least not without five minutes thinking about it.
Problem 3. non-conformity - the Spanish just do not say what the book/CD tells you they will say. For example, if you want to ring up and book a table in a restaurant the books invariably say that you will be asked `for how many people, which day and what time for. WRONG - they ask or say things like `have you eaten here before, we do not do childrens menus, would you like a table inside or out, smoking or non-smoking, we do not open on that day'. Then there are a dozen different colloquial ways of taking your order- `are you ready to order yet, what can I get you, what you would like, what do you want or even yes love'. You might think that this doesn't much matter because the waiter obviously wants to take your order but when you mis-hear a few quickly spoken words which you don't understand he/she might have just asked you to change tables and in reply you ask him/her for `two bowls of mussels and bread, please'.
Problem 4. pronunciation. So many CD's are made by South Americans with their pronunciations which will probably be understood but doesn't sound good. I speak my very limited Spanish in the Catalan areas which has quite different pronunciation from all the CD's/tapes I've used and this Collins one is no different. (I do mean Castilian language pronunciation, not Catalan language). None of the books I've used, including this one, pronounce words the same way as the people I try to converse with.

The CD to listen to anywhere (the book suggests the car) is a little difficult if you've not already learnt the words from the book and other CD. I found using the CD in the car totally distracting from driving - or rather the other way round - I had to stop the CD because it's just not possible to concentrate on the language and filling in blanks when negotiating road signs, junctions, and roundabouts.

One little niggle I have with this package is that there is no alphabet. If there was an alphabet with pronunciation on the CD, many English speakers would get better pronunciation because we tend to elongate our vowels (`a' as in ape rather `a' as in apple). As the Spanish only have the one style of alphabet rather than our two this could be a great help.

To sum up, this learning system is no better or worse than any others, it needs to be repeated and repeated until you are absolutely sick of hearing it and know every chapter word for word. Because you own the product it doesn't mean you will be able to speak Spanish, you will have to do all the hard work yourself. The best way to learn any language is to live in that country and better still to have a native speaking partner.

Bumbobe

26th June 2008

An easy way to learn basic Spanish
This was a simple language course that gave a basic grasp of holiday Spanish. The audio cd was great to listen to in the car and repeating the words (with the windows wound up). The layout of the book was easy to follow and combined with the cd, gives you an opportunity to learn some basic words, useful for a holiday.