Job Discussion Forums

[Patrick Burton]

I'm going to Colombia in September. I'm psyched, but I'm worried about learning Spanish. How good is Rosetta Stone? I've taken some community college classes in Spanish, and I've gone the Instituto Cervantes route, which sucked. Thoughts?

[littlelauren86]

I can just comment on Rosetta Stone.

I used it a bit for Korean and Portuguese. I think the pros are that you'll learn to listen and get used to the language and learn its structure. It also gets you speaking right away which is a plus when you're traveling. The thing is, I had to learn a lot of vocab on my own because especially in the beginning, the phrases they teach you are rather useless in real life like "The boy is running". So, you would have to be good at using your own words and manipulating sentences on your own. However, when you finish, don't expect to be fluent or anything. Personally, I don't think it's worth the money they charge for it. (I didn't pay for it).

[Lukas]

I agree about Rosetta Stone. Generally speaking the program is overpriced and frankly not good enough. Don't expect any explanations of grammar. They bill it as the way children learn, but you're not a child, are you?

A similar program which I have not used and which gets a lot of praise is Fluenz. I believe this goes over grammar and functions of the language in more detail.

For my money, all you really need is the Foreign Service Institute's Spanish program. It is very in depth and detailed, and will take you much further than any of the other Spanish programs I have seen. Best of all, it is in the public domain and can be downloaded for free off the internet. If you want a physical copy of the book, you can find one of the Barron's copies for a few dollars on Ebay and just download the audio.

Good luck!

[Patrick Burton]

I was kind of worried about that with Rosetta Stone. I'll look into your suggestions. If you think of anything else, please let me know.