This book is a complete and versatile first-year Spanish program designed to offer a balanced approach to language and culture. The book contains 14 lessons, topically organized and designed to encourage communication and to offer insight into the language and culture of over 300 million people.
No clear explanation to a lot of words or phrases. You absolutely must have an instructor to be able to understand the book. Often times, words or phrases are thrown in that aren't introduced until later chapters.
In a fit of educational frenzy I took Spanish at a college while I was a full time student at a university. Crazy, I know. This textbook was really helpful and fun to use. I remember comparing it to the American edition and I noticed that the Canadian edition is substantially shorter. I guess they expect more from Americans since it's French not Spanish that is our second language up here in the North.
I'm not sure how much of it remained in my head. I remember though that it substantially increased my understanding of spoken Spanish (even if I couldn't really speak all that well myself) and I remember that it wasn't a particularly overbearing textbook, which helped!
I am using this book for university. It is an easy to understand book. There only thing I don't like about it is that it doesn't have the answers in it to check your work, which prevents you from doing other exercises that are not assigned.