Top critical review
3.0 out of 5 stars100% NOT a beginners' book. It's upper B1 into B2 and higher.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 30 May 2024
This book should only be used with Google Gemini AI or Chat GPT.
This book is NOT for beginners and in true Olly Richards style he is keeping the truth at arm's length as it should not be sold as a Beginner's learning aid.
I've been learning Spanish for about 3 years and I bought the paperback of this right at the start of my journey, so I am well qualified to review this.
I also paid nearly £300 for Olly's Spanish Uncovered Course which again was in no way for beginners. I got my money back in the end as it was a truly diabolical learning resource and these people base their sales on the FACT they 90 percent of people who start a language give up and say they'll go back to it later but never do. Well, not me, I'm in this for life. I will never give up.
I've had the paperback book in my hand so many times and started to try to read it on so many occasions but gave up as I was not at anywhere near a B2 level, WHICH IS WHAT THIS BOOK IS. I've taken it on holidays with me, tried to use it in my break at work but each and every time give up.
I wasted so much time trying to understand and underline with my dictionary to hand, it was exhausting and so demoralising.
However, now I'm at lower intermediate I purchased the Kindle version and I use it together with Google Gemini AI which has literally transformed my Spanish learning as both Gemini and ChatGPT are like having your own Tutor for free who knows literally everything.
There are SO many different tenses and grammar structures in this book and without AI I cannot work them all out without spending hours flipping through my text books.
I know that the likes of Olly and Steve Kashan with his diabolical clunky and not fit for purpose LingQ which I paid for for months say you don't need to understand as long as you get the gist, but that is total and utter nonsense. We do not learn a second language like we did from babies with our Native Language.
I have spent SO much money on different courses, apps and tutors but only now am coming to the point where I can understand quite a lot. It's a daily slow process using various methods of study and immersion.
I'm now finding this book very useful as I use the notebook feature in Kindle and re-read the stories over and over going through my notes and it's very helpful.
I firmly believe that language learning is one of the biggest scams as is totally unregulated, all the YouTubers etc who promise fluency in 6 weeks or something should be jailed as it's simply not true. Don't go near Tim Moser with his Accelerated Spanish. I did that too which was one of the worst.
I started from absolute scratch, I only spoke English and it takes so much time, effort and self discipline but the journey is so worth it with the new friends I've made and keeping my brain challenged on a daily basis.
I do recommend this book but only at B2 or possibly higher B1.
Don't waste your time like I did beating yourself up when you're only just learning basic words and phrases and vocabulary.