Drive Time: Spanish (CD): Learn Spanish While You Drive

by Living Language

A convenient, hands-free approach to learning a foreign language for people on the go presents an all-audio series that takes listeners from simple, everyday expressions and engaging warm-up exercises through additional lessons that cover the essentials of vocabulary, pronunciation, grammar, and basic conversation that are appropriate for real-worl

Genres: Reference

64 pages, Audio CD

First published May 17, 2005

Reviews

[Megan M · Rating 2 out of 5]

If you're going to be stuck in traffic for 2 hours every day, my general advice would be to start learning something with all that time. I listen to tons of audio books, both fiction and non-fiction and it makes the drive so much more enjoyable. I thought I would give this particular Spanish language set a try, because, while I have taken a semester of college Spanish, I thought I needed a good refresher course before I jumped into something of a higher level. While I did learn some new words, this set is not very high quality.

The English-speaking instructor's voice was GRATING. It made me not want to listen to the CDs at all. The sound effects were obnoxious, even though I understand that they are meant to go along with the "drive time" theme. Also, the lessons were inconsistent. Sometimes a word would be broken down by syllable. Sometimes it wouldn't. Sometimes I would get a mini-grammar lesson to explain why a sentence was structured in such a way, sometimes I wouldn't. Consistency and repetition are key in language learning and this CD did not provide that.

I do recommend using the provided book along with the CD. It's the only thing that kept me remotely on target with the lessons. The book has the full vocab list for every lesson.

I will, however, definitely be trying more language learning discs in the future. I like the idea of being able to learn a skill while avoiding crazy Houston drivers.

[Lena Tumasyan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I took this out to help me learn a little Spanish while I'm commuting day to day. I thought it started out well, had lots of examples and practice. However, as they added on lessons and grammar, it got more and more complicated. I definitely feel like the HARDER it got, the more practice and EXAMPLES they gave, but they didn't. So I had to relisten to the same parts over and over, which wasn't BAD, but I still feel like I could have gotten a better grasp by hearing more examples and trying more examples.
Other than that, I like that you really didn't need the booklet to get by. I still used to bc I wasn't sure what the pronunciation was at times, but you really rarely needed it, which is very helpful during driving - you don't want to be constantly looking things up.
It was organized well, they incorporated verbs right into the phrases and into the dialogues that had.
It was a pretty good primer. They stopped at command verbs, so I didn't learn past, future, preterite, but that's okay.
I feel like overall, HEARING the spanish be spoken out loud, as incomplete as it was, was STILL more helpful then reading the same text over and over, or just doing reading and writing. It's different when you speak it or hear someone else speak it, and I found THAT aspect to be very helpful.
I'd recommend this as a great in-car primer. It is NOT comprehensive, NOT the best for practice and conversation, but it gives me some basics. And from here I'll go ahead and do more comprehensive audio courses.

[Emily · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not bad to learn spanish from, but some of the lessons went fast, but if you are stuck in traffic, it definitely makes the time go by faster!

[Wendy Hollister · Rating 2 out of 5]

I am learning to speak Spanish while I drive my car.