Guide To Learning Spanish

Can You Really Learn Spanish In Less Than 8 Weeks?

What is Rocket Spanish ?

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 courses caters for people new to learning Spanish. It aims to take beginners, through intermediate levels, to an advanced knowledge of the Spanish language.

How does it teach Spanish ?

The course comprises 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 ?

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 practise what he/she is learning.
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 practise conversation and comprehension for this particular lesson.

Any other teaching methods used ?

There are two games that are used to teach :
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.
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 ?

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.

How The Rocket Spanish Audio Course Works

The audio component of any language learning course is the most important part in my opinion, because it teaches you how to speak and comprehend spoken Spanish. This is the whole point of learning a new language – to speak to people from different cultures and experiences. You will also find that once you get the confidence to talk to Spanish speaking people without feeling foolish or embarrassed your learning will come on in leaps and bounds. Speaking words and sentences make them stick and being able to communicate your thoughts to other people motivates you to learn more Spanish.

I think the Rocket Spanish audio course is very good. It comprises 31 lessons of about 20-30 minutes in length.

The basic format of each lesson is a scene involving the narrator of the course and her native Spanish speaking friend.

So for example, they might be in a restaurant and they would have a conversation revolving around things you might say at the restaurant.

After the conversation the lesson would work through the conversation explaining points of grammar, vocabulary and, most importantly, pronunciation.

The narrator is an English speaking person and she will guide the teaching and explain concepts and meanings of Spanish words.

The native Spanish speaker (Mauricio, the creator of the course) speaks all the Spanish conversations. He will say a sentence and then say each of the words or pronunciation chunks separately so that the listener can repeat the pronunciation after her.

This method is similar to the Pimsleur way of teaching pronunciation. It might be a bit slow to begin with, but it breaks down each syllable and ensures that you stress each syllable correctly.

The native Spanish speaker generally says all the sentences once and then pauses allowing the listener to say the sentence out loud. They stress that you have to speak the words out loud to get the pronunciation right. As I said before, by saying something it seems to stick in your head.

At the end of each lesson the narrator recaps the points of the lesson. They will run through the conversation again and then ask a few questions that try to incorporate what you have just learned into what you learned in previous lessons.

The interactive part of the audio lessons involves speaking the sentences and pronunciation chunks after the native speaker and answering the questions that the narrator might ask. If the narrator asks a question, there will be a pause that allows you to answer, then the native Spanish speaker will give the correct answer.

As I say, I think the audio course, in conjunction with the games, e-book course and flash cards makes the Rocket Spanish course good value for money. It will definitely help you to learn Spanish or take your Spanish learning to the next level. I think the audio will give you more confidence to speak to real Spanish people, which is half the battle when it comes to becoming fluent in a new language.

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.

Go to the Rocket Spanish website for more details and testimonials:

http://mgohary007.rspanish.hop.clickbank.net/?tid=PBY4J5G8

By: Mohamed Al Gohary

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