Spanish (Latin America) Level 1 Win/Mac Personal Edition [Old Version]

List Price: $209.00

Features:

• This powerful tool uses advanced multimedia tools to immerse you completely in Spanish, as you experience the language just as a native-speaker would
• You'll enjoy 12 special activities with 92 lessons each -- all of them fun and interesting, and sure to teach you more about the language
• Key skills in listening comprehension, reading, speaking and writing are developed as you get a taste of Spanish and South American culture
• Previews, tests and automated tutorials help you when you're stumped, so that your Spanish speaking skills never cease to grow!

Accessories:

National Geographic Traveler

Customer Reviews:

Great tool [Posted on 2007-05-07]
I got this for my parents, they own a business and wanted to learn Spanish to talk to some of their customers, they love it, use the software almost everyday. and have started to use some words at the store as well. this is the best software for language learning.

too much [Posted on 2007-05-10]
Too much money for too little results. There is no grounding done up front so you have no idea how to string together the words you are learning. I had to refer to a translation service to understand what the often repeated articles were. If there were a key you could hit to get a english translation it would allow you to get a better idea of how all the Spanish words work together.
It gets boring really fast too!
Don't waste your money, try Destinos off the internet for FREE.

Learning Spanish for Mac users [Posted on 2007-05-13]
With Rosetta stone learning is a bit joyless, first because the interface is not overwhelmingly convincing, one wonders why people create anything like that when they could do better. There are too many exercises with annoyingly repetitive phrases which block rapid progress, self-tests are not scored nor stored nor compared to previous performance, and therefore not very useful. The words chosen for learning are not very stimulating either. There is also writing control, but also here the score is not being stored to monitor improvement. All in all I have problems moving on because the experience is so boring. There would be better Spanish learning CDs, but they usually are for PC and much cheaper than the Rosetta stone products (see online comparison reviews). Pronunciation control is available, but does the visual control really help me to get better or could it be a bit confusing if the graphs do not really overlap? Maybe I will learn Spanish by simply travelling to South America and being forced to deal with it, or by watching Spanish TV....

You may be able to get this for free. [Posted on 2007-08-05]
Before you pay a bundle for this product, check your local library. My library cooperative, in Hillsborough County, Florida, owns a licence for the whole shebang, every language and every level. Maybe yours does too: it won't hurt to check. I found it quite by accident in my library's online catalog. I registered by entering my library card number, loading a plugin that was provided, and creating a password. Now I can access it at home online and use any set of lessons I want, for the cost of a library card, which I had anyway. Actually I spent quite a lot of time on the French module, but when I got to Paris I had very little occasion to remark that the children were about to jump off the table. I pretty much agree with the remarks of reviewers who awarded the minimum number of stars. (I plan to cross post this to other language modules.)

I really wanted to like this product, but... [Posted on 2007-08-18]
I really wanted to like this product. I think it can be a helpful supplement to learning Spanish. Unfortunately it is priced as a premium, comprehensive learning product, which it is not.
I think you can learn a lot of vocabulary with this product, but there are numerous issues:
1) The voice recognition is temperamental. I had to use three different microphones until I found one that generated scoring above the bottom. The cheapest microphone I owned worked best for some reason. I am sure there are some tips to resolve this problem which I experienced on two different computers, but the documentation that comes with Rosetta Stone isn't that helpful.
2) Don't even try to use Rosetta Stone on a laptop as you will have to listen to the constant whirl of the cd drive. This is much less noticeable on a desk top where the CD player isn't right under the keyboard. Also, because of the constant accessing of the drive, the software feels sluggish.
3) You can input your name, but there is no point to it. The software doesn't do anything interesting to capture and save your performance. You would think this expensive high-end product would analyze your performance and customize the experience to emphasize where you are week. If it is obvious that, based on response time and percentage correct that you know a particular word well, the program should focus you on where you are weak. There isn't even a way to track your progress and I had to create an Excel spreadsheet to remember which exercises I had completed. For the price, the software isn't that smart. If the experience was customized based on performance, the product wouldn't feel so dreadfully repetitive at times.
Rosetta Stone may be a reasonable choice for students of a less accessible language. With so many options to learn Spanish, however, Rosetta Stone is not price competitive for the value delivered.

UPDATE: Rosetta Stone is out with a brand new edition ("Version 3") of Latin American Spanish. I decided to subscribe to the online version to avoid the problems of constant CD drive access because of the copy protection. If you have continuous, high-speed internet access this may be the best way to go. I am midway through the first level of Version 3 and it does represent a significant improvement. First of all it tracks your progress. Second, it uses a variety of formats instead of the four boxes per screen in the previous version. The voice recognition is also much much better. I will submit a review of Version 3 when I am done with it, but it is definitely an improvement from the version that I reviewed here.

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