Spanish with Ease (With Ease Series)

Having struggled with language learning all my life, I found that Assimil Spanish With Ease to be what began to turn my self-condifence with language learning around. The system of small manageable portions works well for me, and I enjoy the humour.I remain a plodder and will need to go through the course several times, but it was money very well spent.If you are new to Spanish definately invest in this version with the accompanying CDs for they help enormously with getting the pronounciation right.

This book was recommended to me by a friend, who is a big fan of the whole Assimil series.After two weeks of studying I am not equally impressed. In foreword they ask to "listen, repeat and understand, without attempting to structure the carefully chosen vocabulary and syntax." You are supposed to "gradually assimilate the basic constructions of the language in the same way as you assimilated your mother tongue."This method does not work for me. Every lesson covers a new subject, but never all of it. One lesson will give a few personal pronouns, the next some of the possessive pronouns. The apparent lack of structure in the material drives me crazy, and is not helped by the VERY chaotic page layout.The book is divided in two phases, which they call passive and active. After 50 lessons you get to the active phase, where you supposedly "start to fully reap the benefits..." I was 30 lessons in to the passive phase, when I got enough of the nonsense. I dumped the book and went to get something more serious from the book store. I seem to need the organized lists, same than I was learning English in elementary school: I am, you are, he/she/it is...

Incredible, this book is priceless and widely regarded as the best way to learn Spanish. I can attest that the methodology works. Most polyglots use the Assimil method for language learning.Chao!

I bought this after using the Assimil French and am finding it really good to learn without having to sit down and learn. Great for speaking and reading

This Assimil system for learning languages differs from the norm - you are not taken down the syntax road, but rather taught useful sentences, which could be taken apart to make other useful sentences. I have only had this book for a week or so, but it seems well thought out. Although I am English, I speak German all day at home (my wife is German), and French fluently (had a business in France for many years), and I never used any language books or courses - rather was thrown in at the deep end. As I am not under the same pressures to learn Spanish as quickly as I had to learn the last two languages, the learning process is different. My wife is learning Spanish also using the German version of this book, and we seem to be progressing OK. Not boring. Recommended.Update 26 days later:Well, still using the book! There are a 100 or so lessons, and I have finished the first part, i.e. to chapter 49, and revised up to chapter 15. The lessons get progressively harder of course, and should I not forget, I will do another revision when I have finished the second half of the book. That we (my wife also) are still using the book gives some merit to the statement I made previously - not boring. We are now conversing in Spanish with some degree of success, insofar as the Spanish seem to understand what we are saying! We understand more of their language too now. I would recommend a verb book to use with it, as if you have no previous knowledge of the language, you need help in this direction, even with some verbs being conjugated in the appendix of this one. I have the 501 Spanish verbs paperback edition by Barrons.To the editor: The book would benefit from a little proof reading for the next edition. There are some small mistakes in both the English and German editions.

A fast easy way to learn a new language

I'm loving Assimil Spanish so far. I'm up to lesson veintitrés (23) and finding it a nice way to improve my listening after the Michel Thomas courses. I'm living in Spain at the moment, and would probably be a little more critical of the book if I had to produce sentences immediately, but luckily my wife already speaks Spanish. I am trusting to the method and look forward to getting to the second wave when I can improve my production. A nice relaxing course after having learned Mandarin Chinese the hard way!