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Title: Living Language Spanish 2 All the Way: Intermediate to Advanced by Crown, Daniel Holodyk, Living Language ISBN: 0517702711 Publisher: Living Language Pub. Date: November, 1995 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 8 List Price(USD): $65.00

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Average Customer Rating: 2.75

Rating: 3
Summary: OK if you just want a review
Comment: The other reviews are quite right.
The English translates the sense of the Spanish,
but it is very annoying because you have to figure out
the meaning of the Spanish from your current knowledge of Spanish, not from the English.
Let this be a warning for others who would create language tapes,
that people buy the tapes because they are learning the language.
Nevertheless, if you just want a review or want to hear some
Spanish spoken in real-life contexts, then this is for you.

Rating: 2
Summary: slovenly translations
Comment: Having gone through the series again, I am downgrading it from three to two stars.

o The worst problem is the cute, artsy English translations which in many cases make it impossible for the user (at least for me) to use the English prompt to produce the correct Spanish counterpart. I have to keep going back to determine whether the problem was my own mistake or a bad prompt. Often it is a bad prompt.

o This is made worse by the fact that the units to translate (the sentences) are often quite long AND THERE IS NO CONFIRMATION so that to check on the correctness of my response I have to keep going back.

o A lesser problem but still annoying is the woman who speaks the English prompts and tries to use this as an opportunity to practice her theater-drama skills. I find this very annoying.

These are problems that the publishers could have avoided if they had tried the course on a focus group. I suspect that they didn't do such testing. This is regrettable since the method of the course is valid (more valid than Berlitz's) and this could have been an excellent course.

P.S. My comments, by the way, apply to other publications of the Living Language "all the way" series.

Rating: 3
Summary: Generally ok but careless matching of Engish and Spanish.
Comment: The book is good. The quality of sound excellent.

However, hose of expect to do much of their learning while listening to the cassettes in their cars may well be disappointed:

o You will be frustrated doing the English-> Spanish translations because of miscues where the English differs gratuitously from the Spanish; that is, the translation is often so loose that you can never get the translation exactly right. An example is a prompt like 'Is there a car mechanic around?' where the Spanish would be 'Where can I find a car mechanic?'

o The prompts are too long considering the advanced vocabulary.