The Barron's Mastering courses begin each lesson with "Basic Sentences" where you are introduced to knew words and phrases. In the Spanish course you are given the entire phrase and then the sentence is broken down starting with the last word, then the last two words, etc. However, in the book the individual words are given first, building up to the sentence. Not only does this mean that the CDs do not follow the book very well, but often times the last word in the sentence will be a word you have already become familiar with and the first or second word in the sentence will be unfamiliar. As a result you get to practice the word you already know quite a bit, but not the words you don't know.I've also used Barron's German course. The German course builds up with the words first, then the sentence. This also means it follows the book. I found the German course to be great, whereas I would not recommend the Spanish course.