What is Rocket Spanish ?
NOTE : This is an older review of Rocket Spanish, before they created the learning lounge. The learning lounge is basically a membership site that you belong to which allows you to use the course material online or download it at your leisure. The Learning lounge has other features like testing your progress with quizzes and Rocket record that records your voice to improve pronunciation. Click this link for more on what the learning lounge offers.
With this said, the rest of this article will tell you what you get in the actual Rocket Spanish content, as this hasn’t changed that much as far as I can see.
Rocket Spanish is a Spanish learning course. Unlike many other Spanish learning products, it can be downloaded over the Internet. It took me about 25 minutes to download it with a broadband connection. The Rocket Spanish site has a provision for dial-up Internet but I believe this would take longer to download. (There is also a provision to buy the course as a hardcopy but it is considerably more expensive than the downloaded version and will take longer to receive)
What level is Rocket Spanish ?
The First Few Lessons
The courses caters for people new to learning Spanish. It aims to take beginners, through intermediate levels, to an advanced knowledge of the Spanish language. With this said, the level of grammar taught is quite advanced but you probably won’t be an advanced Spanish speaker at the end of the course. You won’t have the turn of phrase or the vocabulary to be an advanced speaker. You also won’t have the experience which will only come with using the language in real settings.
So I’d say you would have a decent conversational level of Spanish. You will be able to ask questions of people and have simple conversations about certain things. It’ll be fine for a tourist or someone planning to spend a bit of time in a Spanish speaking country that is willing to talk to people and take their learning to the next level.
How does it teach Spanish ?
The course comprises of 31 lessons.
The first 12 lessons are beginner lessons.
9 intermediate lessons build on the basics.
The remaining lessons are more applied and feature real life situations where you can follow a conversation, for example, in a restaurant.
Each lesson can take between 30 minutes to 1.5 hours, depending on the skill level of the student and the knowledge of the topic being covered.
How is a lesson taught ?
Rocket Spanish Grammar Lesson
The topics of the lesson are introduced along with any new Spanish words.
The student will read through the introduction.
Any Spanish words can be clicked on and the audio for the word will be heard.
The audio takes the following format : first, the English equivalent is spoken, then the Spanish.
Then there is a pause and the Spanish is spoken again. This gives the student a chance to speak the Spanish and practice what he/she is learning.
More on the grammar lessons
More examples will be given of the topic and examples of how it is used.
A variety of written and multiple choice type exercises end the lesson.
The Random button can be pushed at any time and a Spanish sentence or word from the current lesson will be spoken.
This can allow the student to practice conversation and comprehension for this particular lesson. It can also act as a test or even a game where you have to guess the words or phrases. Although these tests are not marked like the one’s in the Learning Lounge, they can still reinforce and complement your learning.
As already mentioned, the pdf style lessons can be downloaded or viewed online. Initially you might want to view them online so that you can go back to other features of the course and maybe even use the My Notes section to take notes if needed.
After that, you might want to download the Pdf guides so that you don’t have to be online to learn Spanish. you can even print the guides out if you want to away from the computer completely.
Any other teaching methods used ?
There are two games that are used to teach :
Rocket Spanish MegaAudio Game
MegaVocab – vocabulary recognition, match one of 6 pictures to a word picked at random by the software.
MegaAudio – comprehension, listen to audio of a word or sentence and guess which of the 4 pictures represent the audio.
These games are useful to consolidate the knowledge learned in the lessons or as a warm up exercise before the lessons begin. Last time I looked at the games only the two were featured but they may have added another one called MegaVerb which tests verb conjugation now.
Rocket Spanish Flashcards
Flash cards are provided :
154 beginner flash cards
123 advanced flash cards
What is good about the course ?
The course builds from beginner to advanced. It will give the student a complete grasp of the Spanish Language at the end of the course.
Random button is good for adding a bit of spontaneity to the lesson. This is useful if you have done the lesson more than once and need to freshen it up a little.
What is bad about the course ?
The pictures in the megavocab are a bit misleading at times which makes guessing the correct words difficult.
You can only improve your pronunciation by listening and repeating the audio, no feedback is given by the software as to how your accent sounds.
Any bonuses ?
A new bonus is the survival kit. This is 13 extra lessons or supplementary resources to help you hit the ground running, so to speak, as soon as you leave the arrivals terminal at Barcelona airport or some other Spanish speaking setting. The kit is a mix of things from a Spanish phrase book that lists key phrases you might need or hear when you first arrive in a Spanish speaking country.
Other resources include key words that you may need. Some don’t seem as necessary as others. For instance, knowing all the words for parts of the body might be nice to know but not essential if you were a tourist for a couple of weeks vacation.
If you are still unsure about Rocket Spanish then you can sign up for the free 6 day course . This will give you a taste of the full course and how it is taught.
Once you have bought the course, you will be sent the Rocket Spanish newsletter every fortnight. The newsletter has a new lesson in each issue.
Summary
I think the content and scope of the Rocket Spanish course represents good value. Although it will take some work for a new student to learn Spanish, Rocket Spanish can certainly make this effort easier.
Note: You Don't Get A Laptop With The Purchase...It's Just Saying Online Access
Go to the Rocket Spanish website for more details and testimonials.
