Spanish Now! Level 1 with CDs,   ISBN:9780764177743

Customer Rating: 

Very good for learning vocabulary and verbs. Would prefer if book included "answers" to assignments, but overall this book is a good tool for the classroom.

Customer Rating: 

A good book and a set of CDs to learn Spanish on your own, at your own speed. However, it deals only with present tense use of verbs.
Easy Spanish Phrase and Practice Makes Perfect: Spanish Verb Tenses are good accompaniments.

Customer Rating: 

During the last three months, two friends and I committed to studying Spanish together. Maryanne was taking a class, which used this book, so Debbie and I bought the same book so we could study together.

Debbie had four years of Spanish in high school. I had years of French and one year of Spanish in college. Maryanne had never studied a foreign language.

After several weeks, we all agreed that this text was confusing, didn't build on what we had already covered, was a bad reference because we could not easily find information we knew was in the book, and generally made it harder to master Spanish. It did expose us to alot of vocabulary, but we felt thrown into the swimming pool instead of learning to kick and stroke.

After Maryanne completed her class, we started over with this book (since we'd all paid for it), and pretty much rewrote it in a more organized fashion.

Customer Rating: 

very good book
come with CD which helps
the condition of the book was very good

Customer Rating: 

What seems like a great book is really a bit of a drag on getting into real productive talk in Spanish. I was surprise that it is a better seller than Easy Spanish Step by Step. Although there have a number of editions of Spanish Now, Level 1, it still starts with sentences that give you no understanding why the words are used. "Es el Gato?" "No, es el Televisor."

Okay, so why is it 'es?' Also, why am I learning about the parts of a house, the focus is on the house, and not the language. Okay, I see a picture of a family in a house with the words associated, but, what will that do for me when I am in the store or restaurant? And what about conversations?

I am rating this four though for a few reasons. Even though there is a limit to what you can learn with this book, as a book along with one with great foundational information, you can learn quickly additional vocabulary words. Once you have the ability to conjugate sentences in Spanish, this book will be a good general study of a variety of environments and be a good addtion for vocabulary review and building.