Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Knowing that I wouldn't really have time to sit down and study Spanish at home or on the computer, I was looking for a CD-base program that could make my learning largely happen during my commutes. I made it through the first 6 CDs before I left for Costa Rica. Ok, I did survive there, and was even identified by locals as the translator on our serving team, but little thanks to this CD program (the pocket dictionary with concise grammar section had a lot more to do with that success!)... These CDs may work for somebody like me who has already learned a language before and knows how to apply the concepts learned before to the bits and pieces that this program throws at you - but I pity the learner who does not have that prerequisite knowledge. The program is thoroughly disorganized and jumps around like crazy, rather than teaching a concept sufficiently before moving on to the next. There are lots of times when just the words are thrown at you without the concept being explained, other times when a concept is explained without examples given to practice the concept. The learning is very fractured, just for the sake of avoiding to admit that conjugations exist. Basically all you do is memorize words, without being pointed in the right direction for how to apply what you're learning to other words or sentences. The only reason I am giving this program 2 stars instead of 1 is because of the extremely useful very first section, which introduces the phrases "I want...", "I have to...", "I like...". That was awesome, but afterwards it really went downhill in usefulness. The accompanying book is even worse. Not only do the chapters in the book not match up with the learning on the CDs, but the review sections at the end of a chapter are using words and concepts that weren't explained in the chapter or the CDs, so this is new material rather than a review - which is very frustrating for a learner who is trying to apply the concepts learned in this chapter to the exercises. And it fails in little details as well, like the vocabulary sections not being lined up so you could actually cover up one side to practice translating the words. I don't know if there are any better CD-based programs out there, but this one is too disorganized for my taste.