Language Learner: Spanish

Language Learners use interactive games to enhance the foreign language skills children learn in school. Heavy on useful, kid-friendly phrases, this kit will have foreign-language students making conversation in Spanish or French in no time!

Grade 3-7–The components of the kit teach basic Spanish words and phrases as well as short conversations. The parents' guide has instructions on using the kit, then plunges into articles, adjectives, pronouns, verbs, and more—all in 16 small pages. Adults unfamiliar with the language will be overwhelmed. The bilingual dictionary does a nice job of listing basic words, first in English with Spanish equivalents, then the reverse. The English-Spanish section includes Spanish pronunciations, designates the definite article for nouns, and gives both masculine and feminine forms for the adjectives. There's also a section for verbs and a list of common phrases, days of the week, and months of the year. The picture wordbook and flashcards feature attractive photos showing diverse children and families engaged in daily tasks as well as pictures of animals, food, clothing, numbers, and more. The flashcards have a photo on one side and the Spanish word on the back as well as the English equivalent. The problem is the CD and activity book. Both are divided into 37 sections, beginning with basic greetings and progressing through various social situations. Students listen to the CD and are encouraged to follow along in the activity book. The Spanish is clearly pronounced, but it is disconcerting when an adult male voice reads the words attributed to a young girl in the activity book. More problematic is the imperfect matching of the text in the activity book with the CD, which most frequently happens in the English translations. For example, in one segment, enfrente is translated as opposite in the activity book, but the more correct across from on the CD. In another section, the entire CD lesson on this and that is undermined in the activity book because instead of eso, esto is used. There are numerous other inconsistencies as well. This is a pity, since the activity book has fun games and puzzles that reinforce the lessons. Under teacher supervision, some of the errors could be corrected and the considerable strengths of the pictorial presentation could be emphasized.–Ann Welton, Grant Elementary School, Tacoma, WA
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