Collins Spanish with Paul Noble - Learn Spanish the Natural Way, Part 1

Let me compare this course to Pimsleur, since that is the other well reviewed course out there. Pimsleur is good, first of all. You will learn basic Spanish with it. this is why Collins is soooo much better.
1. Collins is cheaper.
2. You learn about 20 times the vocabulary that you do with Pimsleur. I am not joking. Collins uses a very similar method as Pimsleur, but I swear to you they have taken Pimsleur and VASTLY improved upon it. I testify to this based on the experience of 7 people I know who have tried and used both. Count this as 7 reviews.
3. Collins Teaches you more things you can really use. Did you know that words that end in "ion" in English are basically all identical in Spanish? Now you've just learned about 1000 spanish words. Collins teaches you absolutely incredible language learning tricks like this. PIMSLEUR DOESN'T.
I could go on and on.
4. Collings teaches you both Spain and Latin American Spanish at the same time, easily, and without any sweat at all. Pimsleur doesn't. You might think you won't use Spain spanish, but you will need it if you progress at all, because most books use it. Trust me.

I could go on and on about how Collins is better. It is absolutely incredible in every way. I am using it along with Instant Immersion Spanish to teach Spanish to my kids. I would NEVER go back to Pimsleur again. It was a waste of money. thank you, Paul Collins, for the gift you have given us!

Yes - it finally made sense. I'm excited to learn again.

I've been listening to Pimsleur and Spanish Like Crazy for well over a year now, for 3+ hours per day. It's left me feeling pretty stupid, since I still cannot understand a whole sentence of Spanish from the radio (well, maybe except "ESPN Desportes Radio - todos desportes todos in Espanol..."). I always graduated with honors, and am generally a fast learner - including straight A's in 2 years of basic high school spanish. But re-learning Spanish via audiotapes has been just frustrating, and made me feel like I've gotten stupider in old age. To be fair, I just started listening to this new system today. But already I've learned more words than I've learned in the other programs (I'm almost finished with Pimsleur level 3). Because this guy actually TEACHES you something, rather than just throwing words at you and asking you to endlessly repeat sentences. He uses memory cues when available (which are a PROVEN way for people to remember so much more than memorization) as well as words everybody already knows, spells things when appropriate, explains things in a way that makes them easy to remember, and gives detailed tips that you can apply to whole groups of words you haven't even learned yet. This makes so much more sense to my brain.And he takes off all the pressure, going at a much more reasonable pace then I've experienced before. Although I do wish he'd make an "extra stupid" version that was the exact same system but with longer pauses for those of us who are a little slower to answer questions.This program was exactly what I was looking for back when I started. I so wish I had found this first! It's a tiny fraction of the price of the other programs.My problems with this program so far are:1. On my android with headphones I have it turned up all the way, and it's hard to hear. I wish it were a couple notches louder. I don't have this problem with the others.2. The guy appears to be from the U.K. He has a strong accent, and uses English terms I'm not familiar with. But he does say "or blah-blah if you are an American". I actually kind of like this better than the guys with the spanish accents personally. I feel like I hear the differences better.3. I haven't done the math, but I assume this program is shorter than Pimsleur just by looking at the number of hours of the recordings. It's still day one, and I'm 1/2 way through chapter 2 already. There are only 4 chapters in level one. Pimsleur is 3+ levels, 30 minutes per lesson, 30 lessons per tape. So also in all my guess is Pimsleur covers more by the end. I just glanced at the PDF, and I can tell that will be very helpful also. Nicely formatted, to the point, and great tips so far.All in all I'm very pleasantly surprised. I think I CAN do this!!! It will still take some time (learning a language takes dedication for years - that's just the way it is), but it's not so hard.

As Paul Noble himself once suffered, so I too have suffered through Spanish lessons before, all to no avail. I found this Spanish course to be vastly different, however, and a great way to break out of the conjugated-verbs-and-memorized-vocabulary Spanish of my past. Paul does a great job of making the lessons more conversational and intuitive, making them easier to remember. I'm usually a very visual learner, but I found this all-audio version to be a great way to beef up my listening and speaking skills. I will note, however, that for anyone looking to really learn Spanish (and not just use it on vacation or conversationally), you will need some kind of text companion to help with things like grammar rules, spelling, and other not-so-fun items. That being said, this is a fantastic audiobook for anyone looking to break out of their beginner Spanish lessons!

I took four years of Spanish in high school and college...but it was feeling downright rusty after too many years. This course condensed about 3 years worth of lessons into an interesting and fun audiobook! Even my youngest (8 years old) kept up with me while listening. HIGHLY recommended!

This is easy to use & easy to understand. It is definately worth the purchase. This is not a waste of time.

ABSOLUTELY POSITIVE. i am going to do it because repeating will lock all i learned in this course.
it is really good course, good quality, very simple. thats probabbly the most simplified course i EVER heard in my entire life.

i tried mishel thomas, and both courses are good. Mishel gives simplified gramar, so you know deeper, and when you get into collins spanish there is basicaly NO GRAMAR at all, so i do reccomend go to mishel first and than to collins because you'll probably get bored of mishel thomas advanced course. its clear and easy but after you listen more times it does make you sleepy.

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i like the way he is putting the story together, you'll get when you start.

lovely course. excelent for price and quality. honestly recomend to all.

I was looking for a good way to learn a language only via audio as I commute a lot, and this is the way to do it! I tried a couple of other methods but they always needed extra reference material really fast. I went through this one in 2 days and feel like I can hold a decent small conversation in Spanish already. It does help that I'm native in French and fluent in English, but I would recommend this method to anyone who wants to start learning Spanish (only fluent English speakers though).

I really like his easy approach. It's effective and simple. He builds your knowledge systematically. I often don't even pay attention to as I have it on in the background while driving or cleaning, etc. and you find yourself constantly repeating spanish phrases without much of a problem.

It won't teach you to be fluent, but it's effective for building your skill and knowledge of spanish. I just wish they were longer and more in depth because I find his style of teaching very effective.

I hope he puts out many more spanish instruction audiobooks (though the third book won't play completely through, but this might be on audible's end).

Also, gave five stars on the story because that's a silly question on an instructional audiobook like this.

By introducing a simple past tense verb (I have, you have, etc), a present tense verb (I can, you can...) and a future tense verb (I am going to, etc.), the task of learning is GREATLY simplified. The approach avoids the difficulties of having to learn dozens of conjugations of every verb one by one. Meanwhile, Collins helps the English speaker identify Latin rooted words in English and that are easily converted into Spanish with a few simple rules. The combination of these two techniques results in a fairly broad ability to communicate quickly for a beginner. By using many various examples that a traveler would run into, the listener is quickly prepared for many tourist type communication situations. Paul Noble is pleasant to listen to and easy to learn from. The male and female repetition of each word or phrase makes it easy to hear. GREAT lesson!

I have just begun listening to this course, but I love the way Paul Noble approaches language. He uses the knowledge you already have of English to help with learning Spanish, and instead of learning vocabulary and starting with the usual, "Buenos dias, como se llama", he gives useful building blocks that will help you build phrases, and improvise chunks of language.

For the first time, I feel like I will make real progress with learning Spanish, and actually be able to talk to people. So happy to have found this program!