Over the years I've tried one sit down Spanish class, two CD-ROM classes, several books, and two audio-classes in Spanish. The Pimsleur Spanish I, II, and III have been the best for actually learning to communicate orally, and I'm a great fan of the series.

While there were some good things about Spanish Plus (which is supposed to go after Spanish III) I was slightly disappointed. The good things are that you hear a greater variety of native speakers here than in the first three courses, which is helpful in improving your ear, and the format is the same excellent Pimsleur format. The not-so-good is that the choice of topics was not great. The whole thing is about books and authors, and while you gain some useful vocabulary incidentally, I would have been happier if they had filled in some of the big holes in the series as far as practical language goes, like how to tell your doctor what's wrong with you, or grocery store dialogues, etc., rather than talking about detective novels, publishing companies and editors. If you do the Pimsleur tapes, you will immediately be able to communicate orally to some extent, which is more than than I can say for a lot of Spanish courses. But be prepared to supplement the vocabulary and grammar with other books if you want a reasonably complete working vocabulary.

A better choice of topics for these Spanish Plus tapes would have made them more useful.

I rated the first three Pimsleur cd's very highly. This one however seems to have been done for their own employees as its almost solely about publishing. So if you are a publisher then the new vocabulary will be helpful, otherwise I don't think you will find the new vocabulary particularly useful.

I can't be as kind as some of the other reviewers. This course is just awful. The packaging says "At the completion of this course, you will be able to speak and understand Spanish at an advanced level". But this is not true at all. The main focus of this 10-unit course is on conversations related to the publishing industry. There are many words that you are asked to repeat, which were already introduced in the Pimsleur beginner-level courses. How many times do you need to repeat "Vivo en Estados Unidos" before you understand it? Also, I can't imagine why the designers of this course think it's useful, at an advanced level (or any level for that matter), to repeat place names such as "Montevideo, Uruguay" using a Spanish accent. This course may give you the opportunity to practice some of the Spanish you've already learned in earlier courses, but you will learn very little that's useful in the real world, unless you're planning to become an editor, or to write and publish a novel.

I love Pimsleur but I have to agree with the other reviewers. The vocabulary in the Plus series is a poor choice. However, it is another ten lessons of conversational practice and there are a few good nuggets presented as well.

So in short it is a something of a let down after the first three series but it is still worth it especially if you pick it up used.

Spanish Plus was produced with the same high production quality as the first three levels of Pimsleur spanish, but the reason i can only give it two stars is that it is much too centered around the publishing industry rather than the general conversation paterns of the first three levels. Also i was expecting more generalized coverage of the subjunctive tenses consdering how important they are in spanish as in other romance languages. The future tense could have been introduced also. It can be expressed with the verb "ir" but understanding it will be difficult without practice. In a nutshell, not enough new general material was introduced and too much time spent on a very narrow area. As happy as i was with the levels I, II, and III, i regret purhasing this one.