Learn In Your Car Spanish Level One: 3 CDs with Listening Guide [Audio CD]

Disc three is more phrase oriented, though it should be born in mind that each lesson is designed to illustrate some kind of grammatical rule. For some reason my disc set came with the wrong book (French instead of Spanish) so I have relied totally on the audio, though I do have a basic Spanish book that I refer to occasionally if I can't properly identify the spelling of a word from what I hear.

The only beef I do have is that while some of the phrases are obviously very useful, like "donde esta el banco mas cercano?" (where is the nearest bank?), others are not. You can just imagine landing in a Spanish speaking country and the first thing out of your mouth is asking for the nearest ATM or bathroom, but not all of the pattern sentences in the exercises are as useful.

It IS hard work learning Spanish this way, but if you do a lot of driving or can take a CD player with you wherever you are, then it is also incredibly economical with what would probably otherwise be dead time used productively. Being able to communicate in Spanish is an incredibly valuable skill in the workplace these days, and even if you don't use it for that, there are so many Spanish-speaking tourism destinations in the Western hemisphere that learning Spanish while you drive around can only widen your scope. I have already found that after 5 weeks of using this plus the Instant Immersion Spanish discs in my car I can understand lengthy chunks of spoken Spanish, read newspapers and understand 85%, and understand Spanish language posts on the Internet tolerably well. My speech still needs a lot of work, but that is to be expected.

So, yes, I do recommend this set of discs, but I would use them in conjunction with something else for variety. You will still spend a lot less and learn a lot more than you would going to classes or on a course. Spanish will be my fifth language, if you count English as one, so I do know of what I speak.