15 Minute Spanish

by D.K. Publishing

With an innovative, visual approach the Eyewitness Travel 15-Minute language guides are the ideal tools for people who need to learn a language fast.

Genres: Nonfiction, Spanish Literature, Language

160 pages, Paperback

First published April 7, 2005

About the author

Dorling Kindersley (DK) is a British multinational publishing company specializing in illustrated reference books for adults and children in 62 languages. It is part of Penguin Random House, a consumer publishing company jointly owned by Bertelsmann SE & Co. KGaA and Pearson PLC. Bertelsmann owns 53% of the company and Pearson owns 47%.

Established in 1974, DK publishes a range of titles in genres including travel (including Eyewitness Travel Guides), arts and crafts, business, history, cooking, gaming, gardening, health and fitness, natural history, parenting, science and reference. They also publish books for children, toddlers and babies, covering such topics as history, the human body, animals and activities, as well as licensed properties such as LEGO, Disney and DeLiSo, licensor of the toy Sophie la Girafe. DK has offices in New York, London, Munich, New Delhi, Toronto and Melbourne.

Source: Wikipedia.

Reviews

[Jen (chekherjoy) · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love how this book breaks the lessons into quick sections with photos. Visually appealing and very manageable. More interesting than other languages learning books I looked at.

It's European Spanish, so the pronunciation guides are helpful but I had to translate those in Latin American Spanish. After a few sections I got the hang of the pronunciations. I'm going to need more reinforcement of Latin American pronunciation, but for getting the vocabulary this is a great book.

I also checked out an older version that had an Easy Grammer guide and a pocket sized Visual Phrasebook. The grammer book was exactly what I needed to understand how the language works.

[Richard Newbold · Rating 4 out of 5]

As ever with DK, a lot of thought has gone into the format and appearance of this guide; the twelve lessons give vocabulary, phrases and pronunciation in common situations (travel, accommodation and of course food and drink! etc). Seriously, you're not going to be a fluent Spanish speaker in 12 lessons of a quarter of an hour - but the chunking of content makes it easy to pick up and spend a few minutes on one word or situation, which combined with conversation classes, is how I want to gain some language skills. CD included.

[Div Manickam · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great way to learn Spanish with visual images and phonetic pronunciations. The app is pretty good to learn the phrases and words from native speakers.

Thank you for this book and for teaching Spanish to the world.

[Ruth · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a wonderful supplemental to my Mango app studies.

[Joey Gurzynski]

Good for picking up some vocab. I wouldn't use it for anything else though. The audio would be good to extract from the accompanying app to plug into Anki or another SRS.

[Darlene Karalash · Rating 4 out of 5]

I did not have the self-discipline to use this book (and audio app) as my sole means to acquire the Spanish language. Nonetheless, I did find this guide useful as a supplement to my Spanish studies while taking an introductory Spanish course for travellers and I also used the thematic lessons for extra practise in conjunction with Duolingo.

***** Additional Commentary, December 2024 *****
After almost a full year of following the online Duolingo Spanish Language program, I've acquired lots of vocabulary and I now understand how to apply grammar rules to sentence construction...what a difference from when I first attempted to use this book last January. Thus, I was able to revisit this book of Spanish lessons as excellent preparation for a return to Mexico this winter.

[Robin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Easy-to-use self-teaching book. Will need more study, but it presents a good foundation in bite-sized units. Each unit is a different theme - greetings, family, ordering in a restaurant, traveling, etc. A good intro to Spanish if you're thinking about traveling, or if you want to refresh your memory of high school or college Spanish.

[Laurie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I actually had the complete language pack with book, phrase book, cds...