Spymasters Guide to Learning a Foreign Language

Graham Fuller's Spymasters Guide to Learning a Foreign Language provides general hints for learning a foreign language. The content dates back to the cold war. In spite of being on CD, it refers to itself as tape, and discusses the USSR as a present entity. The quality of the recording also has a tinny, transferred sound (but is still listenable.)

The content? Well, it contains basic common-sense ideas for learning foreign languages, such as learning differences in grammar and finding cognates. A lot of the focus is on learning European languages. (There seem to be long lists of french words as examples.) While other languages are mentioned, they are not discussed extensively. If I were just embarking on a study of a European language, then some of the ideas would have been useful, though not much more than you'd see in the opening pages of any textbook. For languages like Chinese, there are even fewer useful bits. Overall, it is fairly standard language-learning content. Nothing to write home about.