Learn Spanish With Rocket Spanish Or Rosetta Stone Language Course ?

There are quite a few learn Spanish courses around at the moment. These are self study courses that give you the freedom to study what you want when you want. Sounds great, no evening classes that you have to squeeze between work and a busy social life, but the only problem with too much freedom is lack of focus.

Do you have the discipline and motivation to follow through with the course and actually learn to speak Spanish. Most people don’t because they need a carrot and a stick applied simultaneously; they need to be disciplined and inspired to keep going, in equal measures. In the case of a self study course most of the discipline and motivation to learn the language comes from you. Yup, it’s all down to you. You’ve gotta want it.

However it is not completely down to you. The course that you choose can have a significant influence on how you proceed in your Spanish language learning. It can help you to progress and keep you coming back for more. These are the fundamental elements to a successful self study course.

Two self study courses are the Rocket Spanish course and the Rosetta Stone Spanish course. This article will compare the two in terms of how they motivate a student and how they keep the student coming back for more.

First of all, I’d like to say that there is no comparison between the two products in terms of the way they teach you Spanish.

Rosetta Stone Review

Rosetta Spanish takes the approach that the best way to learn a language is to learn it as you did your native language.

This means how you learned as a baby. There were no notepads, books, vocabulary or conjugating the verb Estar. Simply pictures and sound. Your mother may have placed an apple in your field of vision and said apple a few times. Then she might have started to eat it and said ‘eat apple’. This would all be registering in your head until the day you first say ‘mama’ or ‘ma’. And from then on your capacity for language would grow at an exponential rate using the same method of looking, listening and learning.

Rosetta Stone works like this. A lesson will consist of a series of questions. Each question would consist of 4 images/photographs and a button that can be pressed to hear audio. The audio would be either naming the image or describing what was occurring in the image. It is then your task to select the image that corresponds to the audio. You would go through the whole lesson, that would be on a particular theme, say colors. At the end of the lesson you would be given a mark on how many questions you got right. If you got all the questions right you could advance onto a harder level.

The Rosetta Stone course uses this method to quite an advanced level. It is not simply vocabulary recognition but quite elaborate sentences along the subject verb object formulation.

They also use the same method for recognizing written words, practice writing and have a way to analyze your speech patterns to help improve your accent. The number of lessons is vast and will take you to an advanced level but you have to buy the complete set of 3 courses to get to this level.

Rocket Spanish Review

Rocket Spanish is a bit different in it’s learning approach.

I think Rocket Spanish have tried to combine a lot of different teaching methods into the one package. Thus they have an audio course of 31 20-30 minute lessons. The lessons deal with basic Spanish through to everyday situations like a birthday party.

The audio follows the narrator, a native English speaker and her native Spanish speaking friend. The English speaker introduces the lesson and goes over concepts in the lesson. The Spanish speaker speaks the Spanish parts. You are encouraged to say the words or sentences after him aloud. Each lesson ends with the narrator asking you questions. You are given time to say them aloud and then the Spanish speaker gives an answer.

The second part of Rocket Spanish is a lesson book. This is like a PDF ebook that has lessons from beginner through to intermediate/advanced levels. This is where you are shown verbs in action and the finer points of reading and writing in Spanish. You will also learn vocabulary and how Spanish grammar works in these lessons. There are a number of questions at the end of each lesson to help you consolidate your learning.

Rocket Spanish have two games that are used to improve your vocabulary and audio recognition. They are similar to the Rosetta Stone method in that they use pictures. You have to guess which picture is correct after hearing the written or spoken Spanish word. You receive a mark at the end of the lesson to indicate how many you got correct. With the Vocabulary game you can add your own pictures and vocabulary making the game as complex or large as you want.

They also have flashcards that you can physically print out and make into cards that can be used to practice your Spanish with friends.

There is also a forum where you can ask questions and practice with other people using the course. From time to time the Rocket Spanish team will send you a new follow up lesson.

Good points of Rosetta Stone Spanish

Unique way of learning – like native language learning

Good pictures and photographs – clear what the meaning of the photograph is in most cases

Lots of content

Track your progress

Speech analysis

Bad points

Expensive for the 5 levels

look and learn method may not work for everyone or they may feel they are not progressing fast enough.

>>> Check out Rosetta Stone Level 1 here <<<

>>> Check out Rosetta Stone Level 1-5 here <<<

Good points of Rocket Spanish course

Get a lot for the price – audio, ebook, games, forum , follow up

Newly added : Speech Analysis

Send out follow up lessons and have forum so a bit more responsive to customers needs

Bad points

Some of the Megavocab photographs are a bit confusing.

Note: The Course Doesn't Come With A Laptop...But The Survival Kit Is A Nice Bonus

Go to the official Rocket Spanish website for more details.

Rocket Spanish games : MegaAudio – how useful is it at teaching you spanish

Rocket Spanish have two educational games to help you learn Spanish. They are :
MegaVocab
MegaAudio.

As you can see in the picture (tab on the right of the MegaAudio tab), they have added the MegaVerb game now too. This tests your ability to conjugate verbs in most of the tenses.

This post will talk about MegaAudio.

MegaAudio is similar in structure to the MegaVocab game. You can select from 20 topics that range from fairly specific topics like colors to more practical topics like tourism. Once you have selected a topic you go to a new screen.

The screen has 6 pictures with the English word underneath each picture. A word or phrase is spoken in Spanish and you have to guess which picture the spoken word represents. There is an audio replay button that can be pressed if you didn’t catch the word the first time or need to hear it again. When you pick a picture, the game gives you the Spanish equivalent word and says if the guess was correct or not.

You are asked 20 questioned and given a score of the number answered correctly at the end of the questions. This gives you an idea of how you are doing and whether you can move to another topic or redo the current topic.

I think MegaAudio is effective in teaching comprehension and pronunciation provided you take it seriously. In reality, the pictures and English words are of no use to you unless you have some inkling of the word you are hearing. So you won’t learn new words based on the pictures however you will learn how to pronounce the words. If you repeat the words after the speaker and try to mimic their pronunciation you will develop, with a bit of effort, a decent Spanish accent.

For more details of the Rocket Spanish course and details of a free 6 day course visit the Rocket Spanish website. Or if you want to read more about the course see Rocket Spanish review, what’s the Rocket Spanish Learning Lounge all about and the new audio component.

Rocket Spanish games : Megavocab – how useful is it at teaching you spanish

Rocket Spanish have two educational games to help you learn Spanish. They are :
Megavocab
Megaaudio

This post will talk about megavocab. As the name suggests, the game is aimed at teaching you vocabulary. In some respects I think vocabulary is pretty hard to pick up.

It isn’t something that you can learn in a scholarly manner. The word just has to stick in your head so that it is triggered whenever you see an example of it. I think the best way to get a word stuck in your head is to use it in conversation. This seems to form a link in the mind; maybe even an emotional connection with the word. Once you have used the word, you will find that you remember it. Use it a few times and it will be part of your Spanish vocabulary.

Of course speaking Spanish all the time is not always practical if you are living in a country that doesn’t speak Spanish so how do you learn vocabulary ?

Common teaching methods are to use audio-visual materials to reinforce the meaning of a word. By repeatedly seeing the audio-visual material it is hoped that the connection in the brain will form. Another simple technique is to use flash cards. Flash cards are, essentially, home made picture cards with the corresponding Spanish and English word underneath or on the other side of the picture. The flash cards can be used to play vocabulary games. So you could play at guessing the word for a picture, against another student, and the one with the most cards at the end is the winner. It is hoped that this ‘competition angle’ provides enough emotional involvement in the learning process that the words being learned might stick.

Megavocab is a digital set of flash cards.

There are 20 separate topics to choose from. Each topic concentrates on the type of words that might be associated with the topic, some examples being shopping, colors, food and drink, tourism etc.

When you select a topic, you are taken to a screen that has a photograph, 4 Spanish words down the side of the picture and a box where you can display the English word for the picture. Your task is to click the Spanish word that corresponds to the picture.

Each topic asks you 25 questions and keeps a running tally of the number of correct answers. At the end of the 25 questions, an overall percentage of correctly answered questions is given. This can give you an idea of whether you should repeat the topic or do another one.

I found that the box where you can toggle the English word on/off was useful, as sometimes, the picture was a bit misleading. For example, a picture of new shoes would be displayed and the correct answer would be new. My first thought would be that the answer was shoes, so this feature helps. But I would try to keep the English word toggle on as a back up, as this makes it too easy. You start associating the Spanish word with the English word and not the picture, which isn’t the point of the exercise.

The Megavocab also has a feature where you can add your own questions to the system. You can add your own picture, Spanish word and English word. In effect, you can create your own digital flash cards on any topic you desire. Given that there are many websites where you can get free pictures, you can create a flash card on virtually any word you can think of. I imagine this process of finding the word and picture might help you to learn the word anyhow so it’s a useful feature even though it might be time consuming to create hundreds of original entries.

In my opinion, Megavocab is a useful vocabulary learning tool. It is easy to use and gives you feedback on how you are doing. It is also a bit of fun to play when you need a break from the lessons.

Find out more about MegaVocab and the Rocket Spanish course by visiting the Rocket Spanish site. Or if you want to read more about the course details see Rocket Spanish review, what’s the Rocket Spanish Learning Lounge all about and the new audio component.

Rocket Spanish Reviewed

Welcome to Rocket Spanish Review. This site will give you a detailed review of the Rocket Spanish program for learning Spanish. Whilst reviewing the product, it is compared to other popular learn Spanish courses so that you get a good idea of what sort of course is best suited to you. You will also learn about the best ways to learn a new language.

Newer Entries »