Rosetta Stone Level 1&2 Pack Spanish (Spain) (PC/Mac)

Most other courses (and language classes) would begin by teaching simple phrases such as "Hello", "Goodbye" "What is your name?", "How old are you?" etc. Then you would learn grammar rules, lists of verbs and nouns etc. Rosetta Stone does not do this. Indeed, you will not any of the above phrases until well into the course!

This course does away with the conventional method of memorising grammar rules, verbs etc, and attemts to teach you a language without having to do any of this. This is done by following through thousands of picture lessons, which include flashcards, speaking and writing - in order to 'intuitively' learn Spanish. As there is a fair bit of repitition throughout the course you will actually find that following through these execrises is enough to 'unconciously' absorb the language. Indeed, I have come across no quicker way of learning a language. Make no mistake - this course works!

The course starts of with simple objects and phrases, then slowly builds up to more complex sentences, phrases, and extracts of conversation. It aims to mimic the way you first learned English as a child. For this reason there is no conversational Spanish until well into the course. This means that you will really need to complete the course before you are able to converse in Spanish - it is not an effective tool for quickly learning Spanish phrases before going on holiday.

Good points:-
1. Much more fun than conventional courses, as there is no concious memorisation or drills. The course really keeps your attention, and you feel motivated to move to the next lesson.

2. Very effective for quickly learning new vocabulary

3. The software is very user friendly, well presented and easy to use

4. No 'formal' teaching, or translation. You learn everything 'intuitively'

Bad points:-
1. No good for quickly learning a bit of Spanish (e.g. before going on holiday). You need to complete the course! Simple phrases are not taught until well into the course.
Examples:
i) You are not taught how to say your name or how old you are until 30% of the way through the course.
ii) You are not taught how to say "Hello" and "Goodbye" until you have worked through 60% of the course!

2. There is not a huge amount of conversational Spanish in the course, and no conversational practice, so you will additional study material before you are able to converse well in the language.

3. The course is VERY expensive

4. Because most of the course involves describing what is happening in pictures, most of the descriptions need to be in the Present Progressive tense, e.g. "The boy is eating", "I am sitting down". This creates a problem for this course when it comes to Spanish because the Present Progressive tense is not used much in Spanish - it is mainly used to describe processes or to emphasise that something is happening RIGHT NOW. Due to the nature of this course MOST of the present tense verbs are of this form, wheras is other Spanish courses there are normally only a handfull of Present Progressive examples IN THE WHOLE COURSE!

What is puzzling though, is that in Spanish the Simple Present tense is normally used in place of the Present Progressive (just like in Fresnch, as there is no Present Progressive in French). For this reason I would have expected the Simple Present to be the main tense taught as it is in Rosetta Stone French (or at least a combination of the two) - but this is not the case. Even the Level 3 Spanish course makes extensive use of the Present Progressive tense, which is slightly puzzling.

Despite it's faults, I would still highly recommended this course because it allows you to learn Spanish very quickly and with little effort. However, you will also need additional study material from elsewhere.

If you have any dougts I would recommend first installing the demo version from the RosettaStone.com website.