Spanish Course Review: Learning Spanish Like Crazy.

This is a review of Learning Spanish Like Crazy but first I’m going to speak briefly about some trust issues I have with their company’s marketing strategies.

If you’re new to Spanish and have only been window shopping for Spanish courses you may not have come acorss Learning Spanish Like Crazy (LSLC). For those of you who have been learning Spanish for a while you would have probably seen this course time and time again. The marketing for it is very aggressive. If you pop over to their site you’ll be overwhelmed by the ever familiar marketing layout of dodgy ebooks with countless ‘testimonials’ plastered all over the place until, at the very (very) bottom they finally cut to the chase and give you the price. By that point you’ve been so bombarded by the endless hype about the product you actually start to believe it’s a product made by God himself/herself.

LSLC have ruined any reputation their products build for them as far as I’m concerned. Read this thread and make your own mind up. Basically, it transpired that the owner of LSLC, Patrick Jackson, ‘may’ have been posting fake reviews (many many fake reviews actually) on Amazon slagging off competitors products while praising his own. Amazon had to delete absolutely loads of these reviews. He even makes an appearance on the thread, coming across as a complete tit threatening to sue people.

It’s such a shame, keeping in mind Jackson’s clear lack of values, that the LSLC course isn’t too bad. Although, this has very little to do with him. The structure of the course is a complete rip-off of the Pimsleur method. One thing the pimsleur method serious lacks is substance, teaching only 500 words in all courses. With the LSLC course you learn a lot more words and many more structures (see below for the list of structures covered in level two).

In the course you are presented with a two minute dialogue covering all the structures you will practice in the up coming lesson. Listen carefully because there isn’t much Spanish dialogue in this course so if you want to improve your listening comprehension you need to squeeze as much out of this as possible. After the dialogue you’ll then be taught each sentence/construction individually and then you’ll be asked to repeat them for yourself. Pretty standard stuff. What this course does offer that most don’t is a very good understanding of the Spanish subjunctive. Since LSLC is so packed with new vocabulary in each lesson it is very difficult, unless you’re already mid-high intermediate level, to have them memorized by the end of the lesson. Consequently you have to go through each lesson at least twice.

If I were a begginner I would not make LSLC my first stop. It’s more suitable for higher beginners to low intermediate.

Last time I checked the price was bordering on reasonable but don’t ask me to check again. I’ll be lost in a sea of, what are more than likely, false testimonials.
Disclaimer: the testimonials may not be fake (did you hear that Patrick? theres no suing me!).

WARNING: DO NOT GO FOR THEIR EXPENSIVE OPTION WHERE THEY HAVE GENEROUSLY INCLUDED THE COMPREHENSIVE SPANISH FSI COURSE. THIS COURSE IS IN THE PUBLIC DOMAIN WHICH MEANS ITS FREE. Here’s a link to the free FSI course.

Topics covered in Level two

31. Expressing the future using ir a + infinitive

32. Comparisons and names of body parts

3a. More comparisons and names of farm animals

33b. More comparisons

34. More comparisons and names of hardware tools

35. Conclusion of comparisons and introduction to the Conditional Tense

36. Conditional Tense continued –

37. The Conditional Tense continued –

38. The Conditional Perfect

39. The Conditional Perfect

40. Commands

41. Review of Direct Pronouns, and Commands with direct pronouns

42. Commands with direct pronouns continued

43. Plural Commands

44. The future tense with regular verbs

45. The future tense with irregular verbs

46. Para que and hay que + infinitive structure

47. Demonstrative Pronouns

48. Demonstrative Pronouns continued and the verb “gustar” and similarly conjugated verbs

49. More verbs that are conjugated like the verb “gustar”

50. Continuation of verbs that conjugated like the verb “gustar”

51. Subjunctive mood when expressing desire or preference

52. Subjunctive mood when expressing desire or preference continued

53. Subjunctive mood continued

54. Subjunctive mood continued

55. Subjunctive using phrases such as “es mejor que” and “es necesario que”

56. Substituting the infinitive with the subjunctive mood

57. Substituting the infinitive with the subjunctive mood continued

58. Subjunctive mood using time conjunctions.

59. Subjunctive mood used with time conjunctions continued

60. Subjunctive mood with phrases expressing possibility

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