Spanish Super Pack (Livre + CD Audio + CD MP3) (With Ease): Written by Assimil, 2014 Edition, (Box Pck Pa) Publisher: Assimil (FR) [Audio CD] Audio CD – 18 April 2014

Spent a year with this product, went over it a few times using different techniques. Excellent audio and book, and in my opinion best in the market for self study. Worth the investment.

Still learning but very useful

I would highly recommend this. This Assimil course is great if you want to learn Spanish

Solid book which doesn't fall apart, good audio quality, brain friendly method Assimil is known for.

Easy to use well worth it!

Was expecting the book to be a little larger in size. However, the content is good. I'll just have to wear my specs.

I'm a fan of the Assimil courses. This one is no exception. Very good way to get into learning different languages.

Love it

I completed this course, including every written exercise for every lesson. This course is great for self-study but in my opinion, requires a daily commitment of effort (which is generally the case for language learning anyways), but I stress this fact because it has 100 lessons, which, at the rate of one per day, would take well over three months to complete.First, this course teaches the Spainish of Spain, not Latin America (though sometimes they make references to it). The publisher is French, and the target audience is other Europeans who want to visit Spain. No complaining about this! The actors speak with "distinción", which is to say, that soft c/z sound like the "th" in "think" /θ/, and s is just /s/ like in "see". That means the words like "raza"/"rasa" or "siento"/"ciento" do not sound the same.There are 100 lessons with every 7th lesson being a "review" lesson (dialogue made up of rehashed old material + grammar notes). Lessons are in the form of bilingual text, with each sentence numbered. The English text is usually natural and where Spanish and English don't align well, the author has put some literal translations in parentheses to help you assimilate the meanings. There are also footnotes in the Spanish text that help to provide some minimal explanation or provide some explanation on the origin of an idiom. They sometimes give other examples of usage that would be too tedious too integrate into dialogue of the lesson itself. The lessons are usually funny or informative about the culture of Spain. Every now and then, one lesson seemed a bit less interesting, but overall, the course was fantastic. After the lesson content, there are two sets of exercises. The first one is simple translation (English -> Spanish) and are recorded. I used these to practice transcription. The second set of lessons are fill-in-the blank and are not recorded. Answers to these lessons appear a bit later.There are four voice actors and they do well with intonation and pronounce things clearly. Each lesson is fully recorded in Spanish. There is no English on the CDs. This sounds like it isn't important, but consider this: Other courses claim to have hours and hours of audio, but then a large amount of that audio ends up being silence or English. Trimming that out, you end up with 20-45 minutes of actual Spanish exposure. Assimil is hours, literally, of just Spanish.Spanish has a very rich verb system. This book teaches all of the grammar of verbs: present, preterite, present perfect (have verbed), imperfect, past perfect (had verbed), conditional, future, present subjunctive, imperfect subjunctive, and compound tenses ("would have verbed", "will have been verbed", etc.). I felt like they didn't do as much with less common tenses as they could have, but for more practice/exposure, they have an advanced course (for French speakers).The pacing in these lessons was pretty good for me, but I also was able to practice a bit with others. I religiously did one lesson per day, spending about 30-60 minutes per. I didn't make flashcards from the difficult or uncommon vocabulary/phrases, but I think I should have. Some words are only repeated a couple of times or not at all, but they are usually less important words in your fluency journey (e.g. "brakes [of a car]"). However, many common idioms and interjections do appear many times, which really helped me express myself.I did the so-called "active wave" for a while, but since it nearly doubled my daily workload with little real benefit beyond just simply reviewing the lessons, I didn't continue it beyond maybe 30 lessons. As described in the book, the active wave is the process they suggest you start when you've reached lesson 50 in the book. It consists of returning to lesson 1, covering the Spanish translation, and then translating the English back to Spanish and comparing your efforts. The inline parenthetical notes help you when the word choice or order is not obvious or literal. It could help solidify certain vocabulary or improve my written skills, but I didn't remain convinced that it was the best use of my time. These courses are what you make of them, so your mileage may vary.The grammar reference in the back of the book is superb as well, and it contains a number of stock phrases that you might find in a conversation guide book. There is a two-way dictionary (en->es, es->en) with each word marked with the lesson in which it appears. Yes, that's right, the dictionary doesn't just contain random words, but instead every word has a lesson associated with it!

I wanted to purchase this because so many language blogs & forums speak so highly of it! At first I found it a little confusing - it's set up like a dual language reader, only to save space they did not align the sections of each lesson. Which I get, because some sections take a lot more explanation than others...but for a few more pages it could have been a much better user experience. It's just kind of disorienting when, say, the transcript of sentence 2 of the dialog can only be reached with a page turn while translation of sentences 1,2,3, & 4 are all back with transcript of sentence 1...because things don't line up there is a little arrow telling you to where to move to the opposite page. I also need to whip out reading glasses because the print is so small. I must admit it's small size is easy to pack and carry around, though.The first lesson does not seem promising, as the voice actors are speaking slowly and weird and the dialog is weak. This goes on for several lessons. But then when you least expect it, suddenly those little tiny lessons are packed - PACKED - with content: new words you don't know or words you do know used in ways you haven't seen before. All in context in dialog that is believable. And the voices sound great and are speaking more of a normal speed by that time. Suddenly that little five line lesson is taking an hour to study for.So now I get why the polyglots love it - it is a vocabulary cram and the verb conjugation gets picked up naturally. Each little dialog is a lesson, and sometimes quite nuanced. It forces you to become a student. And the little snippet of audio that encompasses that lesson is somehow more important than a half hour of learn in your car audio. The whole course -- life-like dialogs, book, audio -- it's super concentrated and you really must have discipline.Things I really like about the program are that they don't make you wait until you're exhausted one tense before introducing another - they instead choose to acclimate you to whatever is being used in the situation, which is much more natural and also allows you to sound more natural sooner. I also like how they say each phrase both slow and fast, how they include variations on the ways the subject of the lesson is used, and how each phrase is translated both figuratively and literally so you can get a better sense of its meaning plus its actual structure in Spanish. I'm not able to do the hour daily practice I want to, but I can also see how, if one did, a person would achieve double what they would in most other, less intense, programs. You are really getting your money's worth.The only reason for less than five stars is the book's layout could be improved. Also, the amount of new vocabulary is pretty over-whelming. Fortunately, a generous student has created a memrise deck for most of this course, which helps immensely.

Lessons 78-83 were sandwiched between 69 lol and 84.Besides that Assimil Spanish works. I tested into Spanish III after mastering lessons 1-68. I introduced myself and gave my interests and the teacher urged that I join the level three class. Thank you Assimil.

I am only on lesson 40 but I love this book. This is by far my favorite Spanish learning program. I started doing a lesson per day but then it became more like 3-5 lessons a week since school started. The stories are short, easy to understand, and some are funny or cute. This book makes learning fun which is difficult for me to believe. I have used FSI spanish, Learning Spanish like crazy, Rosetta stone, Spanish Immersion, Pimsleur, Spanish on the Move, and more. The great thing about this book is it does not bog you down. Unlike all the other program, the lesson is only about 1 minute long. I spend 30 minutes or more on it. First, I listen to it without the book, I then read the Spanish side while I listen to it the second time. After trying to figure out what is being said, then I look at the English translation. At that time, I understand the text. I use an app called Audipo (Android) and listen to it as many times as necessary, I repeat those parts that I have difficulties remembering. The goal for me, is to completely understand what is being said. If I happen to memorize the section, then great, if not, that's fine. I am using it mostly as a listening comprehension tool. After 7 lessons, I listen to all the lessons again. It is very easy to go back and go over past material because each lesson is short (about a minute). The book also has the explanation for certain phrases and the literal translations which I find help the information stick. I think Assimil and FSI spanish is the best with helping learn the language. Learning Spanish like crazy was surprisingly useful for phrases and vocabulary that I used in conversations with people on Hellotalk, Skype, and Whatsapp. Memrise and Fluentu are also great tools for learning. I use duolingo but I don't learn anything from it; for me, it is only good as a review of what you know. Good luck!

I've used many resources for studying Spanish but this is head and shoulders clearly the best. It gives you very colorful dialogue so that you can paint the setting in your mind. This helps with not translating from English to Spanish but rather from your thoughts to Spanish. If that makes sense :). Detailed grammar explanation as well and lots interesting tidbits about the Spanish culture.

I am enjoying this method so far. I've had the program about 2 weeks and am just in the beginning lessons. I would rate it 5 stars, but the mp3 CD that came with the SuperPack did not actually contain any mp3 files. I've contacted Assimil and hope they will provide the files for me.

I tried several systems to teach my son Spanish, and this is the only one where it actual stuck and he seems to remember things. Overall I can't recommend this highly enough.

This is by far the best way to learn a language..I use this with Pimsluer and when I'm in the active phase i move to use my italki..it's an amazing program.

nothing i love all about it just im sad bc i dont have time thats all

After trying to learn Spanish in school and then through books I stumbled upon Assimil. The approach of learning a new language by speaking it first makes so much more sense, after all, that is how we all learned our native language. The rules and the written form can come later. I also like that it feels like passive learning. I usually work on my Spanish while driving - listening and answering questions in Spanish.

Excellent stuff. Vista learning is quite good as well. Using in conjunction.

Amazing product

Wow ! Forget that it is European, with real Spanish speakers, which seems to bother some people. This is a fabulous collection of(estupendo) 100 dialogues or sections with everyday conversation, formal conversation, conversations with idoms and slang, you name it.Besides having the meaning on the right side of the page it has the literal meaning of each Spanish word. This helps me immensely.Each dialogue has 12 to 15 short sentences. On the discs each dialogue lasts about 90 seconds each. There are also two reviews at the end of each section of about 6 sentences each.My only criticism is that the last 30 or so sections are spoken way too fast on the discs. I get it, they want to push you to up your game. But you either have to be a veteran Spanish speaker to understand the sentences that are spoken that fast the words literally run together, or do what I did: read and study the sentences ahead of time so you are totally familiar with what you will be hearing. Then you can actually hear and understand what they are saying when they go that fast.Overall, I got a really good bang for my buck.