... in response to self-study spanish books/tapes, posted by chevy on Apr 6, 2002

All the books and tape sets I bought when doing self-study were poor compared to what I got when I enrolled in community college classes.  If there's a college in your area, you might want to look at the class schedule and go to the book store to buy the text book and work book if they have one for the beginning Spanish class.  One other thing they had at the college I went to was a set of cassettes that you could copy in the library.  I thought all of these were far better than the tourist oriented books I found in commercial bookstores.  They took a more structured approach and taught the fundamentals rather than trying to teach you whole phrases like "Where is the hotel?"  501 Spanish verbs is a good reference book I used also and I think you could probably find that in many commercial bookstores.  Get a good Spanish-English dictionary also.