Lial's Intro to Alg, Intermediate, etc

[titianmom]

Hi!
Easy and straightforward question for you all:

Anyone try these textbooks at home and ended up getting rid of it? Had trouble understanding how to do the problems? Found it lacking in any other area? Why?

Thanks.

Kim

[momee]

We did. We tried Lial's BCM and I bought the Intro Alg. stuff.
My ds was having much trouble with math at the time and I read here it would solve all of our problems. Didn't.

I think my biggest beef was in picking which problems to assign and staying consistent with that. If ds started having trouble with a chapter, it was hard to diagnose, I felt.
It just didn't work out as wonderfully for us as it did for everyone else.

The word problems were going over both of our heads. I don't know why, but I couldn't get some of the problems in BCM...stupid, maybe but like I said, not for us.
We switched to a program that had each problem solution worked out so he could rework exactly what he missed. That was huge.

I did like the DVT's and thought they did a good job of explaining concepts, the book was just too overwhelming in the amount of problems, I think was the real issue for him. ???
HTH

[Robin in DFW]

although, her book is by Tobey and Slater, but VERY similar to the Lial's book...we had this one in the house from my older DD's community college class.

After having tried Saxon for several years, and Teaching Textbooks, these books have proven to be great for my kids. The explanations are thorough and there are plenty of problems for extra practice. We typically do the odds and if additional work is needed, the evens.

My DD17 works mostly on her own with occasional help from Dad.

We do have the digital video tutors for BCM and Algebra and solutions manuals as well. There are only answers in the back of the text.

My children are having great succes with these.

hth