Success with Languages (Routledge Study Guides)

I bought this book as it was a set book for an Open University beginners language course I was doing. When the book arrived, I flicked through it, placed it in my bookcase and that is where it stayed for the duration of the course. I successfully completed the course without referring to this book once. Other students on the course did read bits of it, and they said rather that give away "trade secrets" for successful language learning, it just stated the obvious.

This set book it is not at all necessary, I would not recommend it. Instead buy something else like a linguaphone course or something similar in the language you are learning, it will be far more useful to you.

If this is an OU set book for your course, don't buy it. It just states the obvious and is a pretty dull book. If you have having problems learning the language then speak to your tutor. I bought it because it was a set book for my language course but it'll be in my paper recycling bin soon. To say I'm disappointed is an understatement.

I guess that this book survives by being a set book with the OU. In reality its content is very thin and besides, if you wanted to learn a foreign language why would you want to waste time wading through 238 pages written in English when you could spend it learning a foreign language?

I picked this up because I've been studying Spanish for quite a while, and wanted to revise my techniques as I wasn't making much progress.

I ended up fairly disappointed with this book. It's a description of fairly obviously study techniques, padded out with various other dull-ish text to make it into a decent size book.

I had been hoping for a list of interesting drills, or some novel techniques for giving me a bit of a leap forward in my learning, but as a Spanish student for the last 3/4 years, I got very little out of this.

The only person I could see it appealing to is someone who hasn't really done any study at an advanced level, (perhaps an early school leaver, trying to study later in life), and who needs to try and structure their learning.

However, if you're a couple of years into your studies, I would steer clear.