Product Review: Rosetta Stone Spanish (Latin American)

I recently purchased and began using the Rosetta Stone Spanish for Latin America computer training course.  I’ve found interest among other geeks to be very high, so here is a quick review and some important information about purchasing the course.

First, let me say that I’m incredibly pleased with the course, and so far am amazed by my progress in a very short amount of time.

Spanish comes in 5 levels, each level costs about $200, but buying more than one level at a time can cut that cost significantly.  There is a six month return policy, but only if you  buy directly from Rosetta Stone.  I split the difference and bought the first three levels.

A few fast observations

• Nothing is explained, everything is demonstrated.  Context is king.
• I’m never lost
• It is very enjoyable
• I can understand much more than I can speak
• I can read more than I can write
• It is going more quickly than I expected
• There is a lot of interaction in many different ways
• The voice recognition is excellent (you can set how picky you want it to be)
• The “extras” are amazing, including setting up time with a native speaker and even being connected to another student who speaks the language you are learning and is learning the language you speak (!)

A few things to know

1. The price seems significantly reduced until Christmas

2. There is a FANTASTIC practice application (with speech recognition) for the-phone-that-must-not-be-named

3. If you are going to learn Spanish you have to pick Latin American or Spain, and there are significant differences ( I went with Latin American)

4. The levels are each divided into 4 units, and each unit is divided into 5-10 activities, so you get a lot of material in each level. Level 1 Unit 1 took me about a week of about an hour a day.

Recommendation: BUY, but get the six month guarantee; you can’t know how you’ll do with a program like this in just a few weeks, you have to work with it for a while and then assess.