FundacionEscuelaMexicana.com - Spanish Learning Guides

Truthfully, I did not really find this book that helpful, at least not for studying. The book exercises may help when conversing in class, but are pretty pointless if preformed alone. I did not feel that the book did a great job of teaching the grammar either. It stuck certain grammatical topics in the middle of chapters instead of introducing them at the forefront which I think would have been better. It did little to illustrate verb conjugation (I recommend using 501 Spanish verbs to help). More English directions would also have helped a little. The cultural sections in the book were informative, but I would rather have the book focus more on the Spanish language instead.

The two extras that probably will come with the book's package are the Temas CD-rom and workbook. The workbook really wasn't that bad and I think helped me at least a little. It is actually better to get a teacher who makes you do the workbook because these exercises do help (some teachers basically ignore the workbook and expect you to do it on your own). The only problem that I had with it was that it often included Spanish words that were not explained in the text. The CD-rom I felt was very helpful. It was especially useful for preparing for listening portions of exams and includes several helpful exercises.