Customer Reviews
Language Buzan Style - By: Mr President, 25 Sep 2008 
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) & even has two audio CDs to accompany this book.
The book is exceptionally easy to follow & it being coupled with an audio CD is a bonus. This is a clear beginner series & it approaches the learning as such. If you want to be able to order your dinner or buy somethingin 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 hasin 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
Fun - By: tjvf, 19 Sep 2008 
I am a big fan of memory techniques, & love languages so this sounded to me like an ideal combination. I first came across Tony Buzan's memory techniquesin the 1990's & had mixed success with them then. Back then, his system for memorising stings of numbers & 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, & 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 & wondered about giving them another shot. The Collins language revolution was therefore a good opportunity to revisit Tony Buzan's memory techniques & his famous mind maps whilst brushing up on my Spanish.
As I understand the magic of learning with mind maps isin using them to create links & 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 & fun you make them, the better you can remember them. Once your links arein 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, & also helps you to work out which memory techniques suit your memory best & 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 & 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 usedin the book, & aren't presented as being an essential part of the course. Other useful memory techniques crop upin the text: story associations to help you remember which nouns are masculine & which are feminine; & 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 Japanesein 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 nounsin your word associations generally makes them very forgettable. The book uses various names of different people & as I tried to fit them all together, I quickly lose track: so, the story with a man called "Callie" another called Derek, & 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 togetherin funny ways to make memorable stories, I would say that the examplesin 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, allin all, I think this book is a great idea & 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 - & those stories won't help you with spelling: but it will quickly get you up to passable tourist level Spanish - with minimal effort... & if you are like me, you'll probably have a lot of fun getting there!
Great Package But Only You Can Do The Learning ! - By: A. Rose, 22 Aug 2008 The packaging is great to look at & is also very practical - the book & 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 wordsin 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 allin 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 & think' - not as close as green words but there will be a connection to English words, & 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 examplesin the book & I decidedin every example that I couldn't remember the `imagined situation' & why not just remember the two words.
I've tried three other language learning systems with both books & CD's/tapes, & with each one I have the same problems & to be honest this one is no different.
Problem 1. novelty & boredom - novelty because it's new & shiny & feel `I'm really going to do this' but boredom because within minutes I realise that it's not magic & will not just `go into me', it needs learning, & repeating over & 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 & book a tablein a restaurant the books invariably say that you will be asked `for how many people, which day & 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 &in reply you ask him/her for `two bowls of mussels & 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 Spanishin the Catalan areas which has quite different pronunciation from all the CD's/tapes I've used & 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 & other CD. I found using the CDin 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 & fillingin blanks when negotiating road signs, junctions, & 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' asin ape rather `a' asin 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 & repeated until you are absolutely sick of hearing it & 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 livein that country & better still to have a native speaking partner.
An easy way to learn basic Spanish - By: B. Tam, 26 Jun 2008 This was a simple language course that gave a basic grasp of holiday Spanish. The audio cd was great to listen toin the car & repeating the words (with the windows wound up). The layout of the book was easy to follow & combined with the cd, gives you an opportunity to learn some basic words, useful for a holiday.
This did not add to my knowledge of Spanish, (and I don't know that much) - By: b4-its-2-l8, 19 Jun 2008 
This package comesin 3 out of 4 parts; 2 CDs, 1 book with the 4th part being accessed via the Internet.
CD1 entitled "Use me with the book" - containing 99 tracks, based on the 10 sectionsin the book.
CD2 entitled "Listen to me anywhere" - containing 73 tracks, again based on the book.
1 multi-coloured book
(The book contains the website address).
Those are the physical properties, now for the product itself; first I have to disagree with the previous 4 + 5 star reviews - this is NOT a 'language' learning package, it's a 'noun' learning one.
I started off with CD2 as it says it can be listened to anytime, independently from the book so I popped itin the car & listened while I drove to work & discovered that claim is nonsense. If you're new to Spanish & haven't already used the book, this CD won't help much as it primarily provides lists of nounsin Spanish without giving their English equivalents. It gives littlein the way of explanations so I thought that information must be stored on CD1.
After a few days I tried CD1, & found it gives even less information, but even more lists of nouns! (For clarity, that's the same nouns repeated, not lists of new nouns). This CD works ONLYin conjunction with the book. Even though there are 99 tracks here, they're not that great, e.g. some tracks are only 2 words long.
The book has 10 themed sections spread out over 208 multi-coloured pages with large colourful writing; this may well be a useful learning aid but it also helps to disguise the fact there's not a whole lot of information on each page. In all, it has the overall feel of an infant school book.
And this brings us to the crux, this course feels more about promoting Mind Maps (Trademarked by Tony Buzan, who claims he invented them but what he really invented was the name - now that's crafty marketing for you!). However, Mind Maps for me aren't the be all & end all of learning techniques - to be frank - I find Tony's style of Mind Map to be quite garish & so don't work so well for me as other less colourful, more simplified spider diagrams.
Nonetheless, I still hadn't tried out the internet link, which I thought was a neat twist to make the learning genuinely more interactive but sadly is was just more of the same;in digital instead of on paper.
It's a shame because this package seemed to offer something special butin the end it's not much better than a rehash of other, better done work by others.
This book gives no information on Tony's own language ability, which is interesting as I'd like to know how many languages he's managed to learn using his 'revolutionary technique'. I suspect not as many as he'd like us to believe. I also suspect Carmen Garcia del Rio, who's named briefly inside the book but not on either the book cover or outer box, is the real Spanish brains behind the textin this book.
I've given this 2 stars instead of 1 because it tries to be inventive with a multimedia approach.
