The Bottom Line
A Spanish language course aimed specifically at tourists, Take Off in Spanish offers great vocabulary for the visitor to Spain and has more audio than most courses.
The vocabulary and travel dictionary is great for padding out your knowledge and can be used on its own like any other phrasebook if you don't manage to get through the course.
Pros
- More audio than most language courses
- Vocabulary geared specifically towards tourists
- Combination of course book and phrasebook works well
Cons
- Won't give a strong grammatical knowledge
Description
- Take Of In Spanish
- Spanish Language Course for Tourists
- Two books ('Language Learning Kit' and 'Travel Dictionary and Phrasebook') and five CDs.
Guide Review - Review of Take Off in Spanish Language Course
One of my pet hates when it comes to language learning (and I am a former English teacher as well as Spanish student) is the largely irrelevant vocabulary students are forced to learn - "I brush my teeth at 8am", "The camel is under the chair", that kind of thing. So it was a breath of fresh air to receive Take Off in Spanish, which has dialogues about guided tours of Zaragoza and asking for information at a tourist office right from the early chapters.
The grammar parts are not too hardcore but function pretty well when they are present. The course is not designed to give you a very strong grammatical knowledge, but the visitor will at least have some understanding of what they're saying.
