Product Description

Pasos 1 is the first part of our best-selling two-stage Spanish course for adult learners who are either starting from scratch or who have a basic knowledge of the language. The CD Complete Pack contains a copy of the third edition of the Student Book, the three audio CDs and a Support Book containing a key to the exercises and recording transcripts. The CDs for this edition include extra listening material with nearly three hours of recordings.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #10414 in Books
• Published on: 2007-05-25
• Format: Audiobook
• Original language: English
• Binding: Audio CD

About the Author
Rosa Maria Martin is Director of the Language Learning Unit at Queen Mary and Westfield College and an experienced language teacher and adviser. Martyn Ellis is Principal of Target Language Services and is a renowned specialist in language teaching and learning. Both are best-selling authors of several language-teaching series, including the 4-part schools Spanish course Aventura.

Customer Reviews

Strong language course for beginners
I was slightly dismayed to see that the only review of this course had been overly negative; after lots of searching for an effective self-teaching course, I thought this was a fantastic find. Yes, the CD's are mislabelled, but that is far outweighed by the textbooks clear layout, supporting and fun exercises, knowlege consolidation pages, and clear grammar and vocab points. Only other complaint is that one might have to replay the listening exercises a few times to understand them in their entirety, but overall, I think this is an excellent course I would reccomend to anyone wanting to learn Spanish.

Good for adult learners attending Spanish classes
Pasos 1 is one of very few language learning books aimed at adult learners, therefore adults don't find themselves studying chapters on after school activities and questions about what they do with their pocket money! It is a useful classroom support to guided learning but I would not recommend it as a self-study tool. Unfortunately some of the articles are printed in extremely small type which is no good if you haven't got 20-20 vision. The instructions for exercises are written in Spanish and that is a little too ambitious for adult learners at a beginner level. The tapes which are available with the book are not of the best quality - too much background noise, which again is not helpful to those just beginning to study a language. The support book which comes with the tape pack is a very useful little book as it provides tapescripts of the dialogue on audio tape and it also provides answers to the exercises in the book so that learners can self-mark their work. Of course if a learner decides to cheat with written or listening exercises the only person they are cheating is themselves. As a lecturer in Spanish I have used this book for a number of years now and it supports more than one year of study on the programme I teach, however I have to say that I am waiting for something better to come along.

Not sure?
Having purchased this as this is what we are using for college I was looking forward to using the book and CDs.

The book is excellent and the CDs are a big help? But wait like the first reviewer noted the order of lessons is complete hogwash, you have to spend ages trying to find the right audio lesson, not too bad at first but frustrating after a while. I hope they sacked their QA person responsible for not checking this rather simple error.

For that I will have to mark it down, which is a shame as it is apart from that very good.

I will also be emailing the publisher to see if I can get any help there but I wont hold my breath.