Learn in Your Car Spanish Complete Language Course (Learn in Your Car)

I am posting the same review under both titles. I have both sets of CD's. They are VERY different from each other. Each has strong & weak points. Which you chose depends on your goals.

Advice:
If you are leaving for a Spanish-speaking country within one month, and if you want to be able to get by and ask "At what time does the last bus leave for the beach?", "Where is the bathroom?", and "The air conditioning does not work.", then buy Learn Spanish in Your Car. No question.
If you have never taken any Spanish in school and do not even know what it means to "congugate a verb", then buy Learn Spanish Like Crazy. No question.
If you know the very basics, and want to build your vocabulary quickly, like for a vacation, buy Spanish in your Car.
If you want a supplement to a Spanish class you are taking or about to take in a classroom setting, buy Spanish Like Crazy.

Summaries:
Learn Spanish in Your Car:
Lots of vocabulary quickly. Travel focused. Does NOT teach verb congugations until far into the course. I took 1 year of Spanish in school 20 yrs ago. If I did not already know that "tengo" and "tiene" are the same root word, I think I would have been fairly lost with this course from the onset. Within a month on commuting, however, I think this course will have you getting by for a vacation. If you care mostly about getting by (directions, time, booking a hotel room, buying a bus ticket), and not about perfect grammar, I like this a lot.

Spanish Like Crazy:
Starts like a Spanish class would in school. You start by congugating -AR verbs. Then you learn questions, "Do you practice Spanish?" and possessive pronouns. The lessons are like drill sessions: "Now ask, 'Is the coat his?' Now answer, 'no, it is not his coat. It is mine.' Now say, 'It is my coat, but the hat is not mine'." Intense, but you'll know the grammar by the end. Vocabular comes later, but it does not seem travel oriented.

I like using them both. However, I have 6 months before my trip to South America.

This course is a good complementary for Pimsler's course.
It is build as talking dictionary: English word - Spanish word, with very little
phrases and no conversations.

It is fairly difficult to learn only by listening, but these CDs will make a long commute to and from work worthwhile. This set should only be an aid to learning Spanish and I would not recommend it as a single source of learning Spanish. You will have to go through each CD a couple of times to memorize the phrases and vocabulary words. The price makes it affordable.

These cd's use rote memory and repetition to teach. This is the best method I've found for learning a foreign language. The pharses used are of the type that you would use in normal conversation. They do not take a lot of time explaining a lot of abstract consepts and useless history.

I'm getting married in Punta Cana in a few months. I don't have time to learn everything so I am extremely happy with this series of CD's because it starts me off with the basics that I will most certainly need when I travel. I can definately recommend this system.