Rosetta Stone Spanish (Latin America) Level 1 with Audio Companion

Rosetta Stone Spanish (Latin America) Level 1 with Audio Companion

February 27th, 2010

Rosetta Stone

Customer Rating: Rating 3.5 out of 5

(34 Reviews)

List Price: ~~$229.00~~
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Product information Brand: Rosetta Stone
Publisher: Rosetta Stone
Category: Software
Release Date: June 16, 2008
Format: Cd-rom
ISBN: 1603916709
Model: 20918

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Features

Rosetta Stone teaches you a new language naturally, by getting you to think, live and breathe the language
Innovative solutions get you speaking new words, right from the start
Rosetta Stone moves forward only when you're ready--you drive the pace, you set the schedule
With Rosetta Stone, you'll discover a foundation of key vocabulary that you'll use to build into a whole new language
Audio Companion lets you take the Rosetta Stone experience anywhere: in the car, at the gym, or on-the-go

Editorial Reviews

Product Description: As children, we gradually learned our first language through a process of associating mental images with words or phrases, accompanied by complete immersion in our environment. This approach was simple because it was natural and allowed the brain to adapt to increasing complexity. In learning a new language, Rosetta Stone replicates this process to provide the best and friendliest language learning software tool. Learn as many languages as you want!

Rosetta Stone Personal Edition contains everything you need to start learning a language. It's built around the award-winning Rosetta Stone curriculum, which has been adopted by organizations around the world including the U.S. Army, NASA, major corporations such as Deutsche Telecom, IKEA, Royal Dutch Shell, and over 10,000 schools worldwide--and is available in 31 languages spoken by over 90% of the world's population.

Proceed at Your Own Pace - Rosetta Stone is considerate of your time. Anytime, anywhere, you can learn a new language with Rosetta Stone. You learn comfortably without feeling pressured or overwhelmed. Rosetta Stone provides guidance to make your language learning effective, fast, and enjoyable with a process that is intuitive, interactive, and visually engaging. At the end of each lesson, you are given the opportunity to test your new skills. And, since Rosetta Stone automatically records your progress, you can easily pick up where you left off, when other priorities arise.

Dynamic Immersion - Rosetta Stone uses rich visual imagery to help you learn. You will be presented with sets of images to match correctly with a spoken or written phrase in the new language. You will advance to the next set of prompts once you've successfully matched words and images and pronounced the words correctly. With Dynamic Immersion, you learn by directly associating your new language with images--nothing is lost in translation.

Amazon.com: Rosetta Stone Personal Edition contains everything you need to give the voice inside of you a new language. The method used recreates the natural way you learned your first language, revealing skills that you already have. This approach has won numerous awards, and has been adopted by countless organizations, schools and millions of users around the world. Join the language revolution today. Only with Rosetta Stone.

The comprehensive language-learning solution that fits your life.

Learn Naturally
Learn your next language the same way you learned your first language. Dynamic Immersion empowers you to see, hear and comprehend without translating or memorizing. You already have this ability. Rosetta Stone simply unlocks it.

Engage Interactively
Get feedback to move forward. You learn best by doing, and you'll apply what you've learned to get to the next step. Rosetta Stone adapts to your individual needs and skills, because you drive the program with your progress.

Speak Confidently
Start speaking immediately. From the very first lesson, you'll speak. You'll begin with essential basics, which form the building blocks of the language. Soon you'll create new sentences on your own, using words you've learned.

Have Fun
Best of all, Rosetta Stone is addictive. With every entertaining activity, you'll feel success. You'll want to use Rosetta Stone to have that next moment, that next breakthrough. So you'll keep using it, and you'll learn more!

That's language-learning success.
That's Rosetta Stone.

No translation or memorization required.

The most effective way to learn a new language is to be surrounded by it. When you were an infant, your parents taught you this way, by intuitively associating words with images. That's the ultimate language lab, but most language-learning programs completely ignore this.

Think about all of the ways you've tried to learn a language: classes at school, tapes and cassettes, even software that uses your native language as a base for your next one. What do they all have in common? Translation and memorization.

Instead of taking a "direct flight" from your brain to your new language, translation and memorization connects you to your old language. You always have to "fly" from your brain, to your native tongue ... and then translate what you've memorized to communicate.

That might work for a few words, but what happens when you get to a sentence or phrase? When you have to change tenses? You're going to make a lot of "connecting flights." That's why those other methods are so frustrating ... and why they fail.

Enter Dynamic Immersion.
This method encourages you to think like a baby. You'll pair words with vivid, real-life images and make connections between things you know and the new language. Soon, you'll be thinking in a new language, stringing words together into phrases that you create.

Innovative technology.
Rosetta Stone places this Dynamic Immersion method at the core of a suite of software that works with you to develop your skills. The simple, intuitive interface helps to keep you engaged in the solution, while advanced speech recognition technology makes certain that you're speaking correctly and accurately. Best of all, Rosetta Stone never leaves you behind. You'll only move forward when you're ready, when you've become comfortable and confident.

Discover the building blocks of a new language: Level 1.
Your journey begins with a foundation of fundamental vocabulary and language structure that you'll need to begin to think, live and breathe in your new language. Rosetta Stone's solution will give you the confidence to master basic conversational skills. You'll be able to introduce yourself, say "Hello" and "Goodbye," ask and answer simple questions, go shopping and so much more.

Audio Companion
With Audio Companion, you'll enhance the Rosetta Stone experience wherever you go. You'll learn new skills on the computer, and then reinforce what you've learned with Audio Companion. Simply play the CDs on a stereo or download them to a MP3 Player. Each Audio Companion activity corresponds to a lesson in the Rosetta Stone software, so you can turn your travel time into productive language-learning time.

Inside the box, you'll find:

Version 3 Personal Edition CD-ROM software for Level 1 (Windows/Mac)
Headset microphone
User's guide
Audio Companion, a multiple-CD set to play or download to your MP3 player

Customer Reviews

If you are planning to buy Rosetta Stone

by Gary P 2009-04-15, 182 people found this review helpful

I had 2 years of high school German many years ago and now that I am retired I thought it might be fun to learn a new language to help keep my mind active. I picked Spanish because I never really used the German I learned and with Spanish TV and trips to Yuma I figured I might be able to use it. I did quite a bit of research to find a program I could really learn the language at home on my own schedule. This is the best program I found. The program teaches you how to understand, speak, read and write the language. It is done all in Spanish through pictures. You are shown a picture and you are expected to respond in Spanish. The voice recognition decides if you are speaking it correctly and does not continue until you do. It also asks you to type answers in Spanish to questions or pictures. It builds from single words to sentences and to groups of sentences. You can go back and redo lessons which I have many times but it also retests you at timed intervals based on the questions you missed. I have been working with it for 5 months now and really enjoy it.

Some things you should think about before you buy this expensive program. Learning a new language while fun is also very time consuming. The person taking the course needs to be motivated to continue because this isn't a 2 week course but a learning system and will take you a year working every day to become fluent enough to actually use the language.

If you are really committed to learning a language I'd suggest you buy all 3 levels at once. It is expensive but far cheaper that buying them one at a time. I bought the first level to see if I would like it and then ended up having to buy the other 2 levels separately. This gave me 3 sets of headphones. There is also an audio companion that comes with each level. I found it difficult to use and stopped after a couple of months. I may go back and try it after I have completed the levels.

What else do you need besides the course? Well, I would suggest a good Spanish/English dictionary. Sometimes it is hard to tell exactly what is shown in the picture. You can get Spanish children's books from the library and of course Spanish TV. This will help you with the sound and rhythm of the language. You can listen to popular Spanish songs. You've heard the phrase "Lost in translation." well the words that flow so well in one language probably won't in another. The rhymes of Dr Seuess work well in English and fall flat in Spanish and the lyrical Spanish songs sound clunky when translated. But don't let this stop you. The goal is to think in both languages. Once past level one I would suggest the book "Breaking out of Beginner's Spanish" by Joseph J. Keenan. It is not a language book but a book on the customs of Spanish countries. Using I when talking about yourself is common in English but considered self centered and arrogant in Spanish so it is dropped.

If you are considering Rosetta Stone for someone else or aren't really sure for yourself they offer a free lesson CD. Try that first.

Adio'sBreaking Out of Beginners Spanish

Wonderful product

by J. GRICE 2008-09-06, 132 people found this review helpful

While my experience with the CD glued to the sleeve was the same as the other review, I found that denatured alcohol would remove the glue quite well. Rosetta really should look into this.
Beyond this small problem I have found this product to be exactly as promised. It is the easiest, fastest, and in my experience the most successful method of learning a new language in the shortest amount of time. Rosetta conveys vast amounts of well thought out information in a manner that is really quite revolutionary to the field of language learning. By simply going thru the exercises your will develope the numerous skills required to know and use a new language. You are simultaneously learning the vocabulary and grammar as well as learning to hear and speak Spanish. All of this happens without the laborius and tedious study that is normally required in other methods of language study. By using repetition and the introduction of small amounts of new information in each new lesson you will learn how to think in Spanish rather than translating each word or phrase that you want to use.
Let me add that the lessons are more useful and pertinent than any other lessons I have used. It is not "tourist language".
In conclusion I would say that if you are willing to put in the time to do the exercises you will be able to speak Spanish with confidence in
the shortest amount.

Love It!!

by J. Bell 2008-12-05, 72 people found this review helpful

I'm surprised at the poor reviews. Apparently, the packaging issue has been resolved, as my discs were not glued to the box. That aside, I LOVE this program! I took Spanish in high-school, over 20 years ago. I didn't do well then, and have forgotten all but "hola," and "gracias," since then. The first few lessons were pretty easy, very basic, but I was amazed at how quickly my vocabulary grew. I put the audio companion in my car, and can actually picture what they're saying without any translation. I'm stunned! I'm close to the end of level one, and it's gotten a bit more difficult. But at the end of each little section, I am joyfully surprised at what I'm actually retaining. This program is great!

Software good - Support bad

by Cougar 2009-06-24, 70 people found this review helpful

All in all, we love the product, but find the customer support to be severely lacking.

I purchased this product for myself and kids to learn Spanish over the summer. We have not had a good experience with phone support. After several calls, we are still unable to resolve a simple issue with product activation.

You know the story...bounced around from tech support to customer support...and back again....hours waiting in a phone queue only to reach yet another agent with the same canned answers. Another barrier is the fact that phone agents do not speak clearly in English. Ultimately, we still have the problem after all the effort. I guess we'll have to brave it again tomorrow and hope we can reach someone who can actually understand and help, but I'm not optimistic.

It is unfortunate that such a great software product has such poor customer support. Beware if you buy, you won't get much in the way of support.

WARNING!

by W. E. Henderson 2008-12-09, 167 people found this review helpful

BEWARE! If you buy this product you can never resell it. Never return it. Never upgrade it. You better love it. Because you're stuck with it. I purchased version 2 a year ago and wanted to upgrade to 3 so I thought I'd sell my version 2. Rosetta Stone cancelled my eBay auction and threatened LEGAL action for attempting to resell an original legitimate in the box version of their product. They will only let you return it for 6 months and ONLY if you bought it directly from them (sorry Amazon) and there are NO upgrades. Basically, I'm out $500. Though I would never ever consider buying another Rosetta Stone product, where the customer is always wrong. BEWARE of this company.

Beware the copyright protection

by Valerie M 2009-04-06, 72 people found this review helpful

My Rosetta Stone box included two CDs. One is used to install the program. The other CD must be inserted EVERY TIME you use the program. Due to copy right protection, you can NOT make a copy of this CD. You also can not mount this CD to your hard drive. The result is that when this CD gets worn (a blemish, or in my case a fingerprint) -- the program will not work. Once your CD quits working, you are out a couple hundred bucks or you can try Rosetta Stone's "customer service" (read other reviews). Since you need to put in the CD in your disk drive each time you want to use Rosetta Stone, it's only a matter of time until your CD will become worn or damaged.

For the amount of money you pay, the program is surprisingly basic and unpolished. The program itself offers very little instruction and has cryptic keys (an unbrella means go back to the start of the lesson?) The pics are low quality stock-type photos. I can easily cheat and guess the correct responses without actually learning the Spanish. For me, the program forces me to learn from my mistakes......which is not the way I prefer to learn. I think it would be much more expediant to have English explanations during the early lessons.

I question why I should learn the Spanish word for "elephant" in the first lesson. I don't think I'll need to say elephant when I visit South America. I've completed 3 lessons and I still can't order off a menu, find the bathroom, or say please or thank you.

The outrageous price for this product must go toward marketing and copyright protection. It certainly is not obvious when using the program. I will be trying the Fluenz system next.

Rosetta Stone - good product, rotten support

by Mark Wojcik 2009-11-23, 45 people found this review helpful

I bought Rosetta Stone and was quite pleased with it. I used it for about 6 months before a virus took out my hard drive. After I reformated and reloaded the hard drive, Rosetta Stone customer service informed me that they will not allow me to reactivate the reloaded program unless I can produce my store receipt; something that no longer exists after 6 months. I now have a worthless $250 product that is unusable. If you buy this product, save your receipts and good luck to you if you have a problem. Rosetta Stone is more interested in protecting their product than satisfying their customers.

Engaging and Creative

by Neil Alberson 2009-03-25, 22 people found this review helpful

As I am approaching 65 I was wondering if I was capable of learning another language. I had tried several other progams with a lot of hard work and very little to show for it. I was beginning to doubt as to weather I was capable of learning another language. Roseta Stone's aproach of language immersion, mimicing early human language development with it's visual links and verbal cues were and are pefect for me. It's fun and challenging at the same time. I look forward to using my Roseta Stone every day to learn new things and be gently challenged. I also think because there is no translation issues the entire program is emmensly streamlined. The real challenge is that you have to learn a whole new frame of reference which would be true in learning any new language. Rosetta Stone, in my case has made the transition a lot easier by not putting grammar and translating at the forefront of the learning experience.
The only reason I didn't give it 5 stars is because I can't reuse the program on my laptop. That would have been helpful.

Rosetta Stone Spanish (Latin)

by M. Herfurth 2009-01-08, 24 people found this review helpful

I like the Rosetta Stone language program for it contents. It works flawlessly on my XP system computer. Have had multiple problems on my VISTA system laptop. They have now spent over 4 months trying to fix all the bugs, and are still working on it. It seems to be only on certain computers-mine is a Compaq Vista system laptop.

I am really learning!

by Love to Travel 2009-05-19, 12 people found this review helpful

I am half way thru the Level 1 CD for Spanish and I am really learning. I like the way, YOU have to figure out what they are saying by a picture - no one talks to you in regards to a translation which makes you think and most importantly - remember! I can even write it! It helps that I have several spanish speaking co-workers to try my new knowledge on! I just might have to purchase Level 2!