This is James from James Spanish (the learning Spanish blog).

Forget the normal boring repetitive audio language lessons; SmartSpanish CDs for Beginners gives you a whole new way to learn Spanish.

The CDs include several `interviews’ with native Spanish speakers. The topics of the interviews are interesting and varied, with none of the normal `Hello, my name is…’ script that you will have heard time and time again in other programs.

The course is designed to help your ear get used to listening and understanding spoken Spanish, which is something that few other language products can offer. The interviews are first spoken at normal speed and then repeated more slowly and clearly by the instructor.

One of the top complaints of students learning Spanish is that while they feel that they can read, write and speak Spanish to a certain level, they still struggle to understand native speakers. This is because your brain isn’t used to hearing the language, and takes a little longer to process what is being said. This can be extremely frustrating for any student.

These CDs aim to address this frustration by training your ear to recognize Spanish.

The interviews sound like conversations that you would encounter in real life, complete with background noise, natural pauses, and unfinished sentences. You will get used to actively listening to how real Spanish is spoken and learn to understand it.

The CDs clearly explain how the format works, giving you instructions on how to get the most out of the course. By repeating the conversations, you will also gain confidence in your speaking abilities, and because you are copying native Spanish speakers, your pronunciation should improve too.

Before long you should see a significant improvement in your understanding of spoken Spanish, and will be more confident in engaging in conversations of your own.

While there is some clarification of grammar as it occurs in the interviews, if you are a beginning learner the CDs may be best used when accompanying a more complete language course to build your vocabulary.

The CD’s are also a great motivational tool. While you can sometimes get bored with the standard examples in other teaching materials, and demoralized when you can’t understand Spanish speakers that you meet, these interviews help you to realize that with a little practice there is no reason why you can’t understand Spanish as well as speak it.

In closing my review of this product, I’d like to share with you the three Amazon products that I have found most helpful in my pursuit to learn Spanish. If you are truly serious about achieving fluency, I’d recommend getting all 3 of them if you can afford it.

1. Lights, Camera, Spanish (Book + DVD): Learn Conversational Spanish by Watching a Romantic Adventure This is actually a 90 minute movie for Spanish-language learners. It gives the option to watch the movie with subtitles but I’d recommend not using them to improve your Spanish. This “movie” also includes a workbook so that you can reinforce the Spanish vocabulary words and phrases from the film. The workbook also has lots of exercises to keep you engaged in the film. But be prepared to hear Chilean accents. Although pleasent to the ear, the accents from Chile are very different from most Latin American accents.

2. Verbarrator Version 1.1 (Windows Version) This software replaces the traditional verb conjugation books and makes learning how to conjugate Spanish verbs an interactive and fun activity. This should be a required resource for anyone who wants to improve their ability to conjugate Spanish verbs. Especially anyone who is challenged by the drudgery of learning how to conjugate Spanish verbs and who is looking for a new way to make learning how to conjugate Spanish verbs an easy and fun activity

3. Diccionario esencial de la lengua espanola de la Real Academia Espanola (Spanish Edition) If you are really serious about speaking the language fluently, then at some point you will need to replace your Spanish-English dictionary and get a pure Spanish dictionary with both the vocabulary words and the definitions entirely in Spanish. I use this one mainly because it was highly-recommended by a friend from Spain who teaches Spanish. According to him, this is the “standard” among university level Spanish professors.

Rating: 4 / 5