Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I have spent probably a thousand dollars on courses like Pimsleur (I went through all three levels; heavy on pounding stuff into your head, but not enough vocabulary to write home about), Auralog computer-based Spanish(boring and tends to crash the computer), and "Behind the Wheel Spanish" (inconsistent -- way too slow, then way too fast) in my attempt to learn Spanish. What a waste! Everything I wanted was in "Learning Spanish Like Crazy." I only wish I'd found it first. The lessons are, like Pimsleur, structured to pound stuff into your head so you won't forget it as soon as you learn it. But LSLC differs from Pimsleur in several key ways. 1. There's enough vocabulary to choke a mule -- and that's good thing. 2. Every verb is fully conjugated in each lesson, so you recognize the patterns and start "absorbing" them faster...but it's done in a conversational style so you barely realize "hey, I'm conjugating a verb" and you don't get grossed out by the fact that you're learning grammar. 3. Brief explanations are given on things that are complicated or irregular so you understand why you are doing what you're doing, instead of learning by rote. (Adult learners need to understand why, trust me.) 4. It moves along at a good pace. It's taken me 10 days to get to Lesson 13 and I've enjoyed every lesson. Lesson 13 introduces the student to reflexive verbs (and you know it because they tell you, "today we're doing reflexive verbs." Pimsleur never tells you what you're doing -- which is fine if you're a kid, but boring and confusing if you're over the age of 40!) 5. Best of all, it isn't boring. There are plenty of reasons to pay attention when attempting to learn a language, but it's easier to say than to do with some courses. LSLC makes it easy to pay attention because there's always something going on. 6. Lessons are logically laid out, with specific groups of related words in each lesson so you can absorb them all; with Pimsleur the words sometimes seem chosen at random and the conversations change ideas from sentence to sentence. Again, I'm only on Lesson 13, but I like what I'm doing and my vocabulary has increased drastically; I know words for day-to-day functions that Pimsleur never covered although we take such words for granted in English. I've already purchased LSLC level 2. This is great! Highly recommended to anybody who wants to really learn and understand Spanish.