No comments about "The Island of Dr Moreau" (Penguin Longman Penguin Readers).

2 comments about Easy Pronunciation (LL (R) ESL).

1. This will be difficult for any beginning English speaker to use. The introductory information is spoken rapidly and will not be understood by someone learning the language. The "exercises" only pronunce the words once with little time for the student to repeat the word. I can see lots of students getting frustrated with this program very quickly.



2. I found it very useful and practical.
   I suggest this product for people want to improve their english pronunciation.

No comments about New Interchange 2 Class audio CD set: English for International Communication (New Interchange English for International Communication).

5 comments about Jazz Chants®: Audio CD (Jazz Chants).

1. One of the most significant challanges for an ESL instructor is to motivate adult learners to try to speak the language. Jazz Chants has proven to be an excellent tool for me to achieve this goal. The Chants are theme-based and provide sufficient repitition to allow learners to practice the sounds and reach a level of comfort and feel successful. The use of humor adds significantly to the reception the chants receive. The students visibly respond with joy as they recognize the intended joke. Humor breaks down barriers and enhances the learning experience. Choral speaking works particularly well with beginners since they are most reluctant to give voice to their new language. They have a degree of anonymity in this environment, encouraging even the most timid to try out the words. I might think carefully about its value with more advanced students but in my beginner's class I wouldn't be without it.



2. I think Carolyn Graham's chants are great for helping ESL/EFL students learn and enjoy English. They really liven up a class and I like using the tape as it's got some background music. However, I wish it were on CD so it would be easier to locate the song you want to do each time you want to do it.



3. I have used these chants with Non-native English speakers who are trying to improve their accent. Small Talk Chants helps with linking words, sentence stress and shifting sentence stress for subtle changes in meaning. It is a great way to demonstrate prolonging vowel duration, pause, and pitch to stress a word. The students find the chants very helpful.



4. Am I right in assuming this book does not come with a CD? I don't want to buy it without knowing first. It seems a CD would greatly help in teaching the material (and make the titleword "jazz" a little more honest). This is a question, not a review (sorry)



5. This version of Jazz Chants has more vocabulary than "Small Talk," and thus is good for false beginners. Chants are wonderfully empowering for students; they make students feel fluent right away, as well as starting them down the road of acquiring the rhythmn and intonation so particular to American English. Great concept!

1 comments about Communicating in Business Audio CD Set (Cambridge Professional English).

1. This CD is a companion piece to a BOOK on communicating in business. With the book I am sure it would be quite useful but that is not included with this pricey CD set. Here is a sample of how each track is prefaced:

   "Unit 8, Practice 1, Page 68. Listen to a model presentation based on the notes in your book."

   This was a randomly chosen example. The track chosen was the second CD, second track.

   While I can not adequately judge the quality of the combined CD and book without the book it appears to be a useful set. The set is a fairly basic introduction to professional communications targeted at the newly employed, professionals to whom English is a second language and students.

1 comments about Pass Key to the TOEFL iBT with Audio CDs (Barron's Pass Key to the Toefl).

1. I used this study guide with the CD's to tutor my cousin for TOEFL IBT. His score was raised from 48 to 72. The only problem is that the practice tests on the CD rom cannot be saved.

5 comments about Learn in Your Car: Complete Language Course: Spanish.

1. This is a tourist conversation guide , not a learning tool.
   Who really wants to know how to say " when is the next train to madrid ?" or "Can i get two tickets to Mexico", no fundamental apporach.
   waste of money. And the tapes moves on so fast.. You cant even get it right , unless you rewind it..



2. As the editor of the Learning Spanish Products Reviews (LearningSpanishProductsReviews) site, one of my responsibilities is to review Spanish courses that are listed on Amazon. I am also a native Spanish speaker of Argentina and a professional private Spanish instructor.
   
   I will start with the good points of Learn in Your Car Spanish :
   
   1. The course starts with a very thorough overview of how-to-learn-a-language by language-learning guru, Graham E. Fuller. If you are not familiar with Graham E. Fuller he is the author of How to Learn a Foreign Language. To one extent or another, Fuller has studied more than a dozen languages including Latin, Greek, Russian, Arabic, Persian, Turkish and countless European languages. In Learn in Your Car Spanish, Fuller begins by giving the student a roadmap to learning a foreign language. Although he does not hesitate to tell the student that learning a foreign language takes lots and lots of hard work, he does provide the student with a roadmap that has numerous short cuts.
   
   2. Learn in Your Car Spanish puts an emphasis on communication and the author of the course knows that it is not always necessary to use a complete sentence to convey a thought when having a typical conversation.
   
   3. Learn in Your Car Spanish is based upon the premise that the best way to learn a language is the way that a child learns, by learning one-word sentences, two-word sentences, three-word sentences, etc.
   
   4. The course also teaches the most useful vocabulary first instead of having the student memorize vocabulary that she will never use. It also puts an emphasis on survival and Spanish for getting-around.
   
   5. When Spanish grammar is introduced in the course it is done so with the use of examples as opposed to rigid rules.
   
   6. No textbook is required. So just like the name of the course, you can "Learn in Your Car Spanish." But the transcript is included in case you are an auditory-text learner.
   
   7. The course attempts to use literal translations whenever possible to enable the student to understand the structure of Spanish grammar and to understand the definition of Spanish words. I personally use this technique by teaching my own students that "me gusta el carro" does not mean "I like the car," but "to me it's pleasing (the car)."
   
   8. The greatest point of the course is that it covers a tremendous amount of content. I don't know of any auditory Spanish course for just over $30 that covers nearly as much content.
   
   But Learn in Your Car Spanish is not a Spanish course that's devoid of an Anchiles heel or two:
   
   1. There are some mistakes in the audio translations.
   
   2. The teaching method is basically a listen-and-repeat approach. A listen-and-repeat method is probably not the most modern and advanced way for a complete newbie to learn a foreign language because the newbie is not forced to really think in the target language. But a listen-and-repeat method can be helpful for an intermediate or advanced student that is looking to expand her vocabulary. Even though the course has a frailty or two, I still give it 5 stars. Compared to what else is on the market in this price range, you are not going to find a course that covers so much content and that gives you a bonus lesson in language-learning by one of the world's greatest language-learning experts.



3. Dear Amazon.com:
   
   When I ordered this item, I was sure that I will receive it on CDs, while I received it on tape. Unofrtunately, my car does not have tape recorder, so the item is useles. What could you recommend me to do?
   
   Andrei



4. This is probably the worst set of tapes I have ever listened to. It's no more than a list of words on one set of tapes and some verb conjugations on the other set. While I couldn't bring myself to complete the tapes they were so boring, I don't think they ever used the words in context. I bought the advanced level and it was anything but that. At least a third of the vocabulary were cognates that any beginner or intermediate student would recognize anyway. This is a huge waste of anyone's money.



5. This is not a tutorial at all. This is just 2 people saying words in English and Spanish. This is horrible for someone who doesn't know Spanish at all. I am highly disappointed in this product.

No comments about Barron's TOEIC Test Audio CD Pack.

2 comments about Drive-In Spanish.

1. Get Around in Spain gets to the nitty gritty of traveling in a well organised and succinctly written format. The first few pages offer brief reviews of each region of Spain which makes it useful for pre-travel planning while at home, and its compact size makes it easy to bring during a day or night out once you've arrived. If you only have a limited time in Spain as I had, you will find the detailed but highly applicable language lessons, and the photographs of the everday scenes one encounters while getting around Spain by plane, train, car or bus indispensible to a smooth trip. There is so much beauty and good food and drink in Spain and this tightly packed guide amazingly covers it all. Its not a replacement for a more detailed accomodations and attractions guide like a Lonely Planet, but it is the perfect companion to one because it has the most important details and useful language scenarios readily available, without having to dig through or drag along a larger guidebook during say a night on the town.



2. I love these cassettes. They teachers on the cassettes make learning fun and easy. Excellent. Thankyou to whomever came up with the idea to make them. I would love to have the whole dictionary.

5 comments about AP Spanish: Preparing for the Language Examination.

1. This book is one of the best preparation materials and definitely worth the price, but there are no answers- anywhere. Also, the audio CDs do not come with it.



2. Great supplement to your textbook. It has material relevant to the examination. It includes a list of vocabulary the teacher can give to students and exercises to prepare them for the AP Spanish 4 examination.



3. This book has been fully updated and reflects the changes made to the 2007 AP Spanish Language exam. In this book, Jose Diaz gives you ample practice for each section of the new exam.
   For the multiple choice section: The listening practice is comprehensive with numerous long and short audio selections. There are more than 40 reading sections to practice and perfect your reading comprehension skills. The questions reflect the new item types that will be part of the new exam.
   For the free response section: There are several pages of fill-in practice for both fill-in sections: with root words and without. Several prompts are given for the email/letter test section (32 to be exact). There is also ample practice (17 total) for the new integrated skills essay, where students read 2 articles and listen to an audio source. For the speaking sections, there are 20 practice sections for the new directed dialogue/phone conversation test items and 20 for the new simulated in-class presentation--here students must read an article and listen to an audio source combining the two in their 'in-class presentation' of 2 minutes.
   This book is really all you need to be well-prepared for the AP Spanish exam starting in May 2007.
   
   What are the drawbacks to this book? Unless you buy the Audio CD's, sold separately and from the publisher, you can't really practice the audio sections. Without the teacher's guide, also sold separately and from the publisher, you won't know if your answers are correct for the multiple choice and fill-in sections. If you're not in a classroom setting, you won't know if the essay or short letter you have written or if your dialogue and in-class presentation are on track for the score you want. The latter is true of any other test prep book on the market.
   
   All in all, I would say that buying this program is well worth the money; especially since this is one of the few test prep books that has actually been changed to reflect the new 2007 AP Spanish exam.



4. The newly updated (written in 2006 or 2007) version of this workbook, which our AP Spanish teacher provided us, was extremely helpful in preparing for the 2008 AP Spanish exam. All the activities, including the narratives, dialogues, reading passages, speaking conversations, and speaking presentations, were very similar to those on the actual AP test. This workbook also has extensive reference material, such as commonly used verbs, idiomatic phrases, conversational phrases, grammar rules, that also help in preparing for the Spanish exam. If your teacher does not use this book as a supplement to the class like mine did, I would buy the answer key and the audio CDS to get the maximum benefit from this book. If you do the majority of the activities in this book well, you will most likely earn a 4 or 5 on the actual exam!



5. This workbook, which our AP Spanish teacher provided us, was extremely helpful in preparing for the 2008 AP Spanish exam. All the activities, including the narratives, dialogues, reading passages, speaking conversations, and speaking presentations, were very similar to those on the actual AP test. This workbook also has extensive reference material, such as commonly used verbs, idiomatic phrases, conversational phrases, grammar rules, that also help in preparing for the Spanish exam. If your teacher does not use this book as a supplement to the class like my teacher did, I would buy the answer key and the audio CDS seperately to obtain the maximum benefit from this book. If you do the majority of the activities in this book well, you will most likely earn a 4 or 5 on the actual exam!