The only reason that I can't give it 5 Stars is because of the extremely dense male student that they used. If Michel Thomas's staff read this, you are well advised to edit that male student out because he's tongue tied & incredibly frustrating to listen to (what on earth were you thinking of?).


so easy to get into a new language - it gives you confidence   August 15, 2005
 17 out of 18 found this review helpful

I had never spoken or understood a word of Spanish apart from "cerveza" [beer] before buying this course on CD. I knew I was heading to Barcelona for a week in two months' time, and thought that would be enough time to go through the course. It was actually enough time to go through it twice!

Like other reviewers, I got a bit bored of listening to the same inept student stumble over the same words over and over again, but the classroom situation was really helpful to me at the same time. I took pride in myself when I was able to answer a question faster than the good student, and found myself shouting corrections at the slow one!

When I got to Barcelona, I found that I had the confidence to at least attempt to speak to people in Spanish, and I was understood. My vocabulary is still way too small to really hold a conversation, and the CD does not teach you listening skills. I'm planning to do an advanced Spanish course as soon as possible. But as a way of getting into the language with no pain whatsoever, I can't recommend this highly enough.