Rosetta Stone Latin American Spanish Language Learning

“Buenos dias Damas y Caballeros” or “Buenos dias Señoras y Señores”

No matter how you say it in Spanish, much of the language is mutually understandable throughout Europe, Central and South American, and the Caribbean. So, how does the Rosetta Stone Latin American Spanish online language learning experience stack up for those wishing to immerse themselves in the culture, customs, food, and language of Spanish-speaking countries?

The Rosetta Stone Latin American Spanish online program is a very good attempt at helping Spanish language learners to develop, improve, or master the Spanish language as spoken in Latin American countries like Mexico, Costa Rica, Panama, Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Bolivia, and Peru, among several others. The Spanish language is spoken in twenty-one countries worldwide as a first or official language and the Latin American Spanish version of the language program covers approximately sixteen of those countries. There is also a Spanish language version of the software for Spanish as spoken in Spain which has distinctively different pronunciation and some grammatical differences as well. This version of Spanish (from Spain) is also used in South American countries such as Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, and Chile. In a three-week daily session trial of the online Latin American Spanish program, I found many good, interesting points and features in addition to a few fairly minor “flaws” and errors, but, overall, the material is intensive, well constructed, user-friendly, and generally well-done.

The directions to the learner for how to do particular exercises and lessons should have been better. In level one in giving pronunciation, some of the images for the vocabulary are not clear. An example is one word “come” (eat), which is given showing a person eating a fruit, but the next word example “ella” (she) shows a lady drinking a glass of juice. Learners could easily think this a picture for “drink” and not the word for “her”. Instructions to the language learner need to be much clearer. Often I was placed in a situation where I needed to “figure out” what to do or what to do next. Lessons should be clearer and easier to understand. The lessons and units are not always clearly presented. An inexperienced language learner could easily get confused as to the exact meaning of an image, not knowing, for example, if the word referred to the action or the person being shown in the image.

In order to effectively use the program, some software downloads are needed. Also, the learner’s computer should be equipped with a microphone for speaking-oriented lessons. The Rosetta Stone website checks the learner’s computer system and provides links for installation of sound and speech recognition software used during the Latin American Spanish language learning program lessons. A high-speed internet-connection is also helpful in progressing through lessons. Each lesson is “graded” by showing the learner a score via percentage and number of correct/incorrect answers to lesson activities. At the end of each lesson, the learner has the option to either continue on to the next lesson or repeat the lesson.