I can critique it. My father speaks more than 6 languages and wanted to improve his German. Mind, his German is pretty good already. He bought the Rosetta stone software at an intermediate level and he said it was way below him, teaching him just the basics and nothing else, plus no conversational sentences.

It is if you’re interested in just learning very little Spanish. Linguists, and people with vast experience in learning languages will almost always agree on the fact that most language learning methods out there are 50-70 percent fluff! If you don’t have the time to learn a language properly, and you’re after something quick and easy, then you’re probably headed towards dissapointment and frustration. ALL, yes, all language courses out there, with the exception of maybe taking a 4-6 year college program or something to that extent, give you nothing but a head-start and head-start alone towards going to a foreign country and being immersed in another language and making it a bit easier to pick up a few things here and there. The best method to getting as far as you can get in the shortest period of time involves 3 steps. 1st step is to complete a FULL Pimsleur(MUST BE PIMSLEUR) course. Listen to each lesson at least 2 times, taking notes the first time with new vocabulary and studying before listening the second time. The 2nd step is to form a list of the 3,000 most commonly used words/vocabulary in English, to also include the eight parts of speech(verbs, nouns, pronouns, adverbs, adjectives, prepositions, conjunctions, and interjections), which you can search the web for. Once you’ve formed the list, you need to find accurate generic-translations, which you can apply to most common case scenarios of that language(definatley the most challenging part of all this). Once that’s done, make flash cards or whichever method works best for you in memorizing vocabulary, but try to include each word in a sentence, in addition to just the new word and it’s meaning. After you’ve memorized all that, the 3rd step is to locate 4 movies that are preferably some kind of Disney movie, or anything of a slower pace. Childrens movies seem to work best for this. Watch the movie in the language you’re trying to learn with good, quality English subtitles. Watch ONLY these same 4 movies continously as much as possible, to the point where you know what’s going to be said next. Try to plan completing these 3 steps in a time-frame of about 6-8 months. You’ll thank me when you’re done!

The first thing to realize is that NOTHING can beat having a real person teach you everything. You can ask questions and learn in various ways.

This program shows you a picture, says the phrase, and quizzes you. In my personal opinion, and from the view of an aspiring linguist, this is an effective way to learn how to say “The man rides the horse” but you’ll never learn how to conjugate and you’ll never learn /why/ things are the way they are. For me that’s not enough. I like to know why an adjective changes case in accusative position and things like that.

To sum it up: if you learn to speak solely from this software, you will speak the language poorly and with a bad accent. You won’t know grammar rules, and you will get funny looks. I guess it’s within our American nature to do things halfway and accept that as enough.

it’s also used in a lot of school to help the english learners…it’s a very visual program with lots of pictures, it’s very interactive, and there’s always audio so you hear what the native language sounds like…it’s the first year we’ve used it at our school, so i can’t speak yet on its effectiveness, but the kids really enjoy going on the program…

My boyfriend’s father used it to learn dutch. It worked out pretty well for him. I think he speaks it fluently now and that’s the only program he used.