Cleaning concepts are unclear, and the entire book is an assault on the English language
353348
This book has so many typos, misspellings, and missing punctuation that it is torturous to read. Every time the writer referred to rugs, she wrote "rags" and she consistently substituted "thrush" for trash. For example, "today is the day to vacuum your rags and take out the thrush." Her ideas were so disorganized that I couldn't understand her system; I came away with the knowledge that I should be able to keep my house as sterile as an operating room by spending only 30 minutes per day, 6 days a week (the writer will permit me to take a day off on Sunday). However, I was never able to figure out exactly how to implement the concept.  The reviewers who have given this book 5 stars must be the author's best friends.
315084
I hate to award this book one star. It deserves ZERO stars. In fact the author owes me stars for even reading it. Written by someone who clearly has not mastered English as a second language, it covers some obvious how-to but doesn't even touch much of the useable features, like how to sync with a phone or use it for text messaging. You will get more information on Echo by asking Siri than from this book.
40786
I didn't notice it as much in the first book, but the writer abused the English language terribly in this book.  The abuse got progressively worse to the extent I started wondering if the book had been badly translated or if English is the author's first language.  If it is, the writer needs to start looking up the proper meaning and usage of the words he uses.  I was appalled
4094470
After reading all the reviews as well as the sample, I can only assume this is a multi language book.  The English version is simply so poorly translated that it is unusable.
3834304
I received this as a gift with a new Instant Pot and was excited to get started planning recipes.  This book has no index, and recipes within categories are not organized in any way that allows for ease of use.  It includes useless unsolicited advice, like telling you to "do yoga" as one of 12 weight loss diet tips.  It's full of grammatical errors and sentences that made no sense due to incomplete thoughts, repeated words and phrases within sentences, and poorly worded instructions.  Of the recipes I read, several had errors that went beyond poor grammar.  One called for 2 ounces of chicken and one cup of broccoli - to serve 4.  Another instructed you to add "olive" when the ingredient was actually supposed to be "olive oil."  I'm a fairly forgiving reader, and if there were a couple of errors, I would not be here posting.  Unfortunately, errors in this book were more common than not, and it reads like it was never proofread, let alone put through any real editing process.  I don't know who wrote those high mark reviews, but I find it hard to believe that they are genuine. This book is going back.
2265214
If you are getting this to learn anything new, don't waste you're time.  Everything in this book a small child probably already knows. The most basic of language is in this book. This book should be labeled very differently, I gave it the low score because its basically of no use to the majority of people that will buy it to use for writing. Its a good book if you don't know a lot of English, like someone who speaks Spanish and is trying to learn English.  Remember, buyer beware.
3382407
When i decided to get this book i did so after reading several reviews of how great it was and how its perfect for beginners, but i had been mislead. All those positive reviews i read came with a disclaimer stating that they had recieved this book for free in exchange for an "honest" review. i confidently went head and purchased this book. the language is terrible. makes little grammatical sense and concepts are hardly explained. i'm not too much of a beginner, but it has been awhile since i have done physics in school despite this i can tell you that basic concepts aren't explained properly at all. I didn't even read through to the end. a couple  of pages in and you will see how bad this poorly written book is. i paid for this garbage and this is my honest review: save your money. buy something else.
192359
Thanks to Amazon, I only paid a penny for this book plus shipping. I'm less insulted by any monetary cost than the time
that I spent reading almost a third of the 300 pages presented here, thinking that the reviews couldn't have been that
"off".  Antecedents are crossed, mixed up, or nonexistent. There is no poetic merit in the awkward sentence constructions.
The story lines lose impact when the language of each story is so disorganized.  I can not recommend this book and wonder at
the other favorable reviews.  I do not agree, and would never recommend this book to a friend.
Note that: this book was originally published in French, so I can not see whether (a) the backwards constructions existed in French,
or (b) the translation into English lost original meaning and morphed the book into something awkward and uncomfortable to read.
Perhaps the original French doesn't have all the problems. Obviously, this review is about the English version.
1488704
I have no clue why my high school depends so much on these books. I show these textbooks to my family members (who happen to be from Costa Rica, Venezuela, and Spain) and we all just laughed at the sheer lunacy of these textbooks. We'd learn more Spanish in "America: The Book" than from the Holt books. The translations, dialogue, reviews, and examples were all trivial and laughably disorganized. How do they expect students to learn Spanish when 60% of the text is in English? There are much more efficient and easier ways to learn Spanish, the easiest language on Earth, than from an arbitrary slop of Holt publishing. I recommend Rosetta Stone, instead.
3184684
I really don't know why this book is getting good reviews from so many other people, besides maybe the fact that it's cheap. I like that the price is low, but that doesn't make it a good product. Let's start with the description on the back: "Void of all nonessentials." Well, by the end of this book, you still won't know how to make small talk or book a room at a hotel, but you WILL know the words for "sailboat" and "industrious." When was the last time you used "industrious" in English?

Then there's the teaching method. Every section contains a long description of a series of events, followed by a selection of vocabulary and a grammar unit. Sounds fine in theory, except that the vocab seems chosen at random and the descriptive passages are almost entirely useless for getting by in a German-speaking country. For example, there is a description of a scene where someone's car breaks down. The passage simply lists the fact that someone stopped to help and fixed the tire, rather than making any attempt to train the reader as to what to say if their car breaks down in Germany. Another reading piece has the characters going to a restaurant, and then just says "Alle bestellten irhe Lieblingsgerichte/everyone ordered their favorite dishes" with no dialog whatsoever. Great, very helpful.

I guess if your ultimate aim in learning German is to read a lot of novels in the language, this is the book for you. If you want to use it to actually speak to a normal person, look elsewhere.
3149089
The text is very clumsy, and reads like it is translated from a foreign language.  For example, about 19% in, it reads, "With intermittent fasting, your body works differently when you fasting to when you are feasting".  Shouldn't that be "...when you ARE fasting COMPARED to...."?  This book has the most typos and missing words I've ever seen in a commercial offering.  The content may be good, but this is very shoddy.  If the author is this lazy, can I really trust what he says?
969542
Common sense, nothing original. Cleaning for dummies would be a better suited title
3889913
This book was written as if English is the author's second language, which is fine but maybe get an editor in to clean it up before publishing it. The advice  in this book is so basic that I wonder if it was written by a single man who has only ever read other books on marriage. I don't know what I want  expecting from a 35 page book on marriage (and be warned: a number of those pages contain lengthy lists of the author's other books in everything from sales to Wicca to government conspiracies) but I guess it was too much. Bottom line: this book is not worth your time. (He even misuses a semicolon! I mean, get a friend who reads a lot to proof read your book!)
2103704
This is one of the most poorly written books I have ever had the displeasure of purchasing.  This will teach me to read reviews better before I buy!  This person is obviously foreign or English is a second language.  This comes through loud and clear from the introduction to the recipes.  And the recipes don't make much sense either--whoever heard of preheating your microwave?!?!  Buyer beware--not good!
1048156
I can prove, not only by recourse to the previous edition, but also to my wartorn reprint from 1969, that Wheelock originally used the Latin verb "duco, ducere" as the main third declension verb, meaning "to lead."  The Sixth Edition arbitrarily swiches this to "ago, agere."  Now this verb means "to lead" in only one very narrow sense; more properly it translates "to do," which I contend becomes shockingly clear at its future passive participle, "agendum."  Surely, nobody whose native tongue is English can seriously doubt that an agenda is what one is going to do, not what one is going to lead.  Arrggh!  I have written the publisher long ere now and heard nothing from them.  They've had abundant time to respond.
Also, the composer of material for the Workbook often wanders far out of step from the main book.  Case in point: on p. 26, the text makes a special point of the fact that "sum, esse" has no active or passive voice.  On p. 46, the Workbook asks for the conjugation of "esse" in "active indicative tenses."  This careless mistake is carried over into "possum" on the next page.
No question that, as many reviewers have pointed out, Wheelock uses English as its principal window into Latin.  Students who were gypped out of proper grammar instruction practically must be re-trained, which consumes a huge amount of instructional time and energy.  The English-as-a-window aspect is both a blessing and a curse, because it is high quality English that helps.  I've told my students that they simply aren't reading high enough on the food chain if the derivatives are often strange!
But, regardless of the method used, some of the caveats raised here apply equally as well. Let nothing obscure the overall conclusion that Wheelock is so good, probably nothing will supercede it for a long time to come.  And, right now, it's messed up in places and is in dire need of fixing.
4238470
I'm a French teacher, too, and find this series frustrating and practically impossible to use.  As far as I can tell, the material is barely organized, beyond a few thematic vocabularies.  The grammar doesn't build clearly; the idiomatic expressions seem to come out of the air -- a new learner is faced with memorizing meaningless foreign phrases, many of which are slangy and not strictly grammatical.  Yes, casual French should be mentioned, but the correct grammar should be taught first: example: why omit "ne" from expressions before the students have completely learned negation?

English is used in directions for exercices when French would clearly be understandable and much more useful for learning the language.  Why, why is half the text in English even in a second year textbook?  I suppose grammatical explanations may be more useful in English, but there is no reason to ask questions about French texts in English, nor to give directions in English beyond the first few lessons.

The graphics are cheap looking and unattractive.  The chapter descriptions for the students are virtually worthless: no list of grammatical structures that will be taught, no logic to the sequence of target structures.  For example: Why ask the student to learn a conditional before any structures leading up to it have been taught? Life is too short to figure out the color codes that supposedly organize the chapters. Maybe there's so much English because there is no serious organization beyond silly color codes.

The way I learned French in the 50's and 60's would be better than this appalling "modern" series. Teachers and students: do not waste your money, and more importantly, your time on Allez, viens.
4941707
Reading the "look inside" I can say,thank you,I was actually trying to see what these DIRTY BOOKS are like,and since I am a Spanish speaker,I have to say,this is bad. 1st of all Spanish is very different from country to another,second they have some phrases that I have never ever heard!!!3rd they ought to make an effort and distinguish where is the phrase use(what country)....I would not bother with this book. I wanted to get the Japanese version,but if this one is an indication of how poorly it is done,I will find a Japanese person,and pay them. Moral of the story,I really think these "Dirty" books are terrible.