However, I personally feel that the material is let down by the poor quality of the accompanying CD's and tapes. They attempt to use 'real' people; I realise that there is an argument for this, but most beginners will find that the language is being spoken too quickly to take in, and what is worse, is hard to hear due to poor sound quality and background noise (such as children playing).

I have found tapes accompanying other books far easier to follow from a beginner point of view.