Español en 3000 is a podcast specifically for people learning Spanish.  The name comes from the fact that they focus on the 3000 most commonly used words in Spanish, which they claim encompass 94% of spoken Spanish (that’s probably about right I’d say).  What distinguishes it from other similar podcasts is that the conversations are entirely natural, not constructed.  Most others in this genre have two people sit down and do a scripted conversation, one that’s engineered to teach a specific concept that day (e.g. possessive pronouns, gender and adjectives, the subjunctive, etc.).  It’s also a (mostly) Latin American Spanish podcast, that is the overwhelming majority of the podcasts feature native speakers from Latin America, so if that’s the kind of Spanish you want to learn, this might be for you.  They’re based in Medellin, Colombia, and so Colombian Spanish is featured more than any other type (especially the Paisa dialect).  They do, however, make an effort to get speakers from other regions in order to provide listeners with a variety of dialects.  So far, the dialects featured include: Argentinean, Bolivian, Colombian, Chilean, Cuban, Ecuadorian, Mexican, Iberian (Spanish from Spain), and Venezuelan.  Note that you can select the one you want from the drop-down menu at the top where it says “Study by Accent”.

The basic product they’ve got here is very simple and easy to use, it’s just a podcast (a very good one, content matters more than anything), a good audio player with a really useful speed controler, a “mini lesson” at the end where they cover quite a substantial amount of material from the podcast, and a transcript of everything.

The Podcast

They talk about a variety of topics, generally trying to focus on a personal story involving one or some of the speakers, e.g. why someone moved to Medellin, how they fell in love with their spouse, etc.  You can actually choose from a few general areas via the menu at the top; currently available are: aventuras (adventures), relaciones de pareja (romanctic relations between couples), negocios (business), and zambullida (literally “dive” or “diving”, refers here to diving into everyday situations, it’s kind of their “miscellaneous” category).

The Transcript

If you look at the screenshot of the beginning of one of their podcasts further down you can see just what one looks like: you have the audio player at the bottom (I talk briefly about it below), and a transcript in the middle where each speaker is clearly labeled and lines are separated so that it’s easy to follow along.

The audio player at the bottom of the screen follows you as you scroll down through the transcript, so there’s no need to scroll back up to try to find it in order to pause or adjust the speed.

The screenshot below is the beginning of one such podcast:

The Audio Player

I was impressed: it’s simple, it works perfectly on mobile (the whole site does, just pull it up in your browser, you don’t need an app for this podcast), and offers an excellent speed adjustment that allows you to speed up or slow down the audio.  See below for a screenshot of me adjusting the speed (you just click the clock icon on the right hand side of the audio player to bring this up):

The Mini-Lesson

I’d say this is more a full-size lesson.  It’s surprisingly comprehensive, they cover a lot of vocabulary, grammar, and slang used in the podcast.

The lesson itself is in audio format, in Spanish, and with a verbatim transcript for you to follow.  Each topic gets a separate section within the lesson.

See the screenshot below to get an idea:

Conclusion

I lean more towards calling Español en 3000 a podcast for intermediate and advanced students than one for beginners, though advanced beginners (A2/B1 level) will benefit from it as well.  Everything is in Spanish, though the fact that excellent transcripts are provided for all of that Spanish audio means that really anybody could use this.

I sort of feel like this is less a case of them competing with other, scripted podcasts (like SpanishPod101) and more a case of them filling a different niche, satisfying demand for something different altogether.  Most students want to move on to working with natural conversations (and away from the scripted, dumbed-down-for-students stuff) as soon as possible, so this I think will find a lot of fans.

Is there a free trial?

Yes.  They offer a 7-day free trial, just go here to their homepage to sign up.  After that it’s just $15 a month if you pay monthly, or you can get lifetime access for $147.

Do I use it?

Yes!  Actually, surprisingly, I do find myself listening to a conversation there every now and then.  I was asked to review it by the founder (I actually met him in person in Medellin: Aussie, nice guy), and found myself genuinely interested in a lot of what they were talking about, partly because they were interesting conversations in general and partly because they talked a lot about Colombian and, specifically, Medellin culture and I was staying in Medellin at that time.  I always learn at least a few new words and expressions (most native Spanish speakers not from the regions the speakers are from would find themselves doing that since local slang almost always gets used).

I you found that useful, don’t be afraid to leave a comment below or contact me.

Cheers,

Andrew

I just finished trying a new service called GoSpanish and I’ll cut to the chase: flat rate of $35 per month for unlimited Spanish classes at four different levels with high-quality teachers, class sizes averaging 2-6 students, and which you can participate in from any device with internet (works on desktop, laptop, and smartphone – I tried all 3).  DO IT.

A few more details…

Cost

The $35 per month is their cheapest plan (Silver) but even the cheapest plan gets you unlimited classes.  I suspect they’ll change this in the future but those who get in on the original deal will probably be able to keep their original plan at the original price (in other words: they’re low-balling themselves, get in now).  The two additional plans are at $59 and $79 per month and they merely get you some private classes (2/month and 4/month, respectively).

For those of you wondering how that compares with what you’d pay for a 1 hour class with a good tutor on iTalki: fear not, I have done the math for you.  A good Spanish tutor on iTalki will run you about $10-15/hour, with GoSpanish going from the $35 plan to the $59 one gets you 2 private, 1-hour classes (with good teachers in my opinion) for an additional $24 (59 – 35 = 24), or $12/class.  Pretty reasonable.  If you go for the Platinum plan at $79/month, that nets you 4 private classes for an additional $44 (79 – 35 = 44), or $11/class–so a slightly better deal.

Honestly, that’s pretty good: that’s at the low end of what you’ll find on iTalki if you find a good teacher for that rate (you can, but you’ll likely have to try a few first).  If you want private tutoring, the upgrade is probably worth the premium, yes.  If you don’t, it’s not.  You’re not going to do much better than $11-$12/hour anywhere else.

Classes

The classes are broken down by level and there are four of them: Beginner, Upper Beginner, Intermediate, and Advanced.  “Beginner” is for people starting from scratch who speak absolutely no Spanish whatsoever, Upper Beginner is for those who are still beginners but can at least find their way around a bit (corresponding to A2 of the CEFR scale for those familiar).  Intermediate and Advanced are the classes I took and I would place their Intermediate Class at B1 on the CEFR and their advanced class at B2 (you’ll be hard-pressed to find anybody running C1 or C2 level classes for any language outside of expensive tutors who specialize in teaching people to pass those exams).  You need to be conversational if you’re going to take the intermediate or advanced classes.

There are 15 classes held per day by my count, each one is 1 hour long.  That typically means 2-3 per day of each level, except Advanced.  From what I saw there was only one Advanced class per day and it was the last one of the day at 8 PM my time (CST, I’m in Texas, so that’s 9 PM EST and 6 PM PST).  I’ll post a screen shot of their class schedule below.

Teachers

The teachers were all very good by my measure, and I’ve got years of experience with dozens of tutors at this point.  They’re all native speakers and all of the ones I had were Argentinean, for what that’s worth.  They all spoke very clear, neutral, South American Spanish.  None of them had the strong, stereotypical Argentinean accent (the “che”/”she” thing).

How It Works

The teachers have basic lesson plans and, at least at the intermediate and advanced levels, do an approximately 50/50 mix of exercises and casual conversation, which I think is just right.  At the beginner level (I did not take a beginner class) there is probably more structure and less conversation simply because beginners don’t yet have a strong enough command of the language to hold a conversation for very long.

They make a point of calling on the students equally, in order, so that everybody gets about equal participation (unless you choose to merely listen in, which you can do).

The way the exercises function are basically as springboards into conversation about the subject they address, e.g. a recent session I did (which I have a video of) talked about estuaries in Argentina and the animals that inhabit them, which led to a discussion about wildlife and parks in both Argentina as well as in the places the students lived, so we all had an interesting discussion about that and learned not only some Spanish but also a bit about the different regions the teacher and students were located in like the everglades, alligators, and manatees in Florida where he lived (all of this was in Spanish, of course).

You start off by reading (the teacher has each student read a portion out loud, correcting any mistakes they make) about the topic of the day, in this case estuaries in Argentina:

Yabla is a website that was designed from the ground up specifically and exclusively for helping people learn languages via videos of popular media in the language they want to learn (TV shows, cartoons, documentaries, etc.) that you can watch (streaming) on the site.

Now, if you’re familiar with me, this site, and/or my book you know that this very much aligns with my recommended technique for learning Spanish, the Telenovela Method, where you use Spanish-language popular media such as movies, TV shows, music, and books to teach yourself Spanish.  So obviously I think Yabla is a brilliant idea…

But how well does it actually work?

What it is & How it works

They have a collection of Spanish-language videos that they have amassed over time (1550+ videos at the time of this writing, and they do add more from time to time), primarily consisting of popular media originally intended for native speakers such as TV shows, cartoons, documentaries, and music videos.  This is precisely what you want in my opinion because that way the Spanish you learn is normal, everyday, Spanish – how people actually talk.  It’s not some contrived, weird-sounding (to native speakers) hypothetical that’s been put together for Spanish students (like what you might have seen in a language textbook at some point).

Now here’s where the real value comes in: they have transcribed every single word said in each of these videos into subtitles for you so that you have word-for-word Spanish subtitles, and then they’ve translated all of it into English so that you simultaneously have English subtitles as well. You can turn off either of them at any time thereby allowing you to have just the Spanish subtitles visible, just the English ones, both, or neither while you are watching a video.  Note screenshot below (yes, I have an account with them):

Please note that the above is only the left hand side of the screen, I’ll get to the right hand side in a minute.

Not only that but take note of the additional buttons you see above: “Back” will skip the video back precisely one sentence thereby allowing you to repeat something you’re having trouble with until you get it, “Skip” moves it forward one sentence, “Loop” plays the same sentence (whichever one you’re currently on) over and over again for you (again, very useful for working on something you’re having trouble understanding and/or pronouncing), and “Slow” slows the video down to, I’m guessing, 1/2 speed.

The combination of the “back” or “loop” button along with the “slow” button is just an absolute winner: if you’re having trouble understanding and/or pronouncing a phrase, simply slow it down to 1/2 speed and then play it over and over again with the “back” or “loop” button until you’ve got it at that speed, and then click “slow” again to bring it back to normal speed and play it over and over again until you’ve got it at that speed, and Ta-Da!  Done!  You just learned to comprehend and/or speak a complete Spanish sentence at full speed!  Excellent!

*A quick note on the “comprehend and/or speak” bit: if you’re only working on listening comprehension then you would just replay the phrase until you can understand what they’re saying, whereas if you’re also working on your speaking ability – you want to learn to say what it is they’re saying in the video – then you would replay the phrase and each time repeat after the native speaker in the video, continuing to do this over and over again until you sound just like them.

The subtitles are integrated with a dictionary and flashcards – just click a word you don’t know

Very cool.  Here’s what the whole screen looks like when you’re watching a video (you only saw the left side above):

Note the portion on the right: that’s the integrated dictionary, clicking on any word in the subtitles (either Spanish or English) automatically looks it up, and, if it’s a verb, automatically tells you what form the conjugation is (present indicative, etc.), such as when I click on “tenemos” in the subtitles you see above I’ll get this:

Doing so also automatically adds it to Yabla’s flashcard program for you where you can review it later on by clicking on the “Flashcards” button in the top menu which takes you to this page:

And then clicking on “Review these words” starts the program which looks like this:

Notice how the context the word was originally used in – the video that you added the word from – is linked to down at the bottom so you can click on it and go to it, plus it tells you which specific subtitle (they call it a “caption”) the word was used in (in this case “Caption 2”) thereby allowing you to just skip ahead in the video to the specific phrase the word was used in so you don’t have to watch it all the way through or skip around looking for it.  Nice work, overall.

Videos of a wide variety (including cartoons, my favorite) and they can be ordered by difficulty!

There are many different categories: Action, Animation (cartoons), Art/Culture, Comedy, Drama, Documentary, Economy/Business, Food, Lessons, Music, Musicians, Newbie, People, Science, Society, Sports, Travel, and many more.  There’s something for everybody, which helps to prevent you from getting bored or running out of things you want to watch that you’re actually interested in and will keep your attention.  I believe that using media (TV shows, movies, books, etc.) that actually interest you is massively important – otherwise you get bored and quit – so this is a huge benefit in my opinion.

Not only is their a wide variety, but there’s a wide variety of difficulty in videos available: that is, they have everything from very simple, slowly spoken, children’s cartoons that use very elementary language – which is perfect for a beginner – to TV shows and documentaries intended for teenagers and adults – which would be more suited to an intermediate or advanced learner.

Plus, each video is rated at a certain level of difficulty from 1 to 5 and you can order them by difficulty (or how recent they are, or by title) – this is extremely useful.  You can do this with all the videos or you can narrow them by category first and then order them however you’d like.

Oh, and of course you can also search for videos by entering the title or any word that you can remember from the subtitles or description (each video includes a short description).

How long are they?

I noticed that all the videos seem to be 3-5 minutes long, which is just about the perfect length for a beginning to intermediate level Spanish learner.  In the case of TV shows or documentaries where each episode is obviously longer than that, they just break them down into parts (Part 1, Part 2, etc.).

Which dialect/accent do you want to learn?

I ask because each video is labeled (next to the listing in the search results and on the video page itself) with the dialect/accent used by the speakers, e.g. Colombia, Mexico, Spain, etc., as you can see below right underneath the title (also note the difficulty rating):

Very useful!

 The Game

They also include a nifty little game you can play while you watch the video that allows you to simultaneously work on both your listening comprehension and spelling by writing out the specified blanked-out word in the subtitles.  To start it all you have to do is click the blue “play game” button on the bottom right of the video player seen below:

Doing so then starts the game up and it looks like this (note the blanked-out word after “¿De” in the second sentence):

It plays the portion of the video where the phrase shown is spoken and then waits for you to type in the missing word over on the right and then hit the “check” button, which results in this:

I intentionally misspelled “dónde” to see what it would do (I didn’t accent the “o” as I should have) and was pleasantly surprised to discover that if you otherwise spell it right, but miss an accent mark, it’ll give you half credit and tell you that the problem was a missing accent mark!  This is a surprisingly well thought out system.

Oh, and your score is kept track of via a point system with 10 points for correct answers, 5 for correct but without the right accent marks, and 0 for a wrong answer.

For Teachers (create classes and assignments, track progress, discounts!)

Yabla allows teachers to create “classes” that their students can later join and do homework in.  The teacher as well as each student gets their own account with its own login and password.  The homework consists of watching assigned videos, playing the game (described above), and getting points for doing so.  As the students complete the assignments you can monitor their progress with detailed reporting, thereby ensuring that they’re actively engaged and to what degree each student is completing the assignments.

They also offer discounts for educators looking to use this system with a whole group of students, here’s the pricing table that I looked at (prices are from August 18, 2014, and note that the regular price for individual users is $9.95 per month so even the most expensive, on a per-user basis, plan below is still far cheaper and comes out to $8.33 per person per month):

To learn more about the school/group program and check current pricing go to the School & Organizations section of their website here.

What’s it cost?

$9.95 a month for individual users as of right now.  That’s it.  Which is damned cheap all things considered.  I’m not going to tell you that you should buy it – I don’t know your exact situation so I can’t say for sure – but I will say that I think it’s an excellent overall system, it’s great for teaching yourself Spanish, and I think that it’s a very good deal.

Go here to check out their website, watch the intro video, try out some of the demo videos for yourself, and sign up if you like.

Hope that’s helpful for you, don’t hesitate to let me know what you think.

Cheers,

Andrew

Perspective: A beginning Spanish learner

As with all my reviews, this one will be written from the perspective of a beginning Spanish learner, one which I am intimately familiar with as I have spent quite a bit of time as one, during which I tried a good number of various courses, books, products, and techniques.  I’m going to tell you how I personally felt about the course, what my own experience with and reaction to it was.  I feel this is likely what will most interest and help you so this is how I’m doing it.

To be clear: yes I bought this course.  They did not give me a free trial or solicit me to do a review.  I bought it and actually spent several weeks using it and playing around with all the various features of it, I’m quite familiar with it at this point.  I have direct access to the entire course via their website and will include screenshots of whatever part of the actual course I’m talking about when relevant.

What I’m going to tell you in this review

• The Good: the aspects of it that I thought were definitely beneficial to a beginning learner…things I liked, in other words.
• The Neutral: stuff that I felt may or may not be appealing to someone depending on their own personal circumstances such as their time frame for learning it, their own personal learning style, etc.  Things that I’m “meh” on but which you may like (or not), in other words.
• The Bad: potential downsides to and problems with the course.  Some of these depended on who the learner was and what their requirements were – in other words they may not necessarily apply to you – whereas others were absolutely a negative regardless.  What I didn’t like, in other words.
• Who this course is for: the types of people that I feel this course would be beneficial to such that it’s worth it to them to buy it, and why.
• Who this course is not for: the types of people that I feel this course would be a poor choice for – those for whom this might be a waste of money in other words – and why.  I’ll also try to recommend some alternative products if I can.
• How I would use this course to help me learn Spanish: in other words, how I would integrate it into my overall Spanish-learning system along with everything else that I would be inclined to use such as watching Spanish-language TV shows and movies, listening to Spanish music, reading Spanish books, reviewing flash cards, using workbooks, talking to native speakers during language exchanges, using other courses, etc.
• My overall take on this product as a Spanish learner and someone who teaches others Spanish and, primarily, how to learn it on their own (that’s what this website is about!).

What I’m not going to bother telling you (because it’s probably a waste of your time and mine)

Basically anything you can find just by looking at their website, e.g. the tech specs (technical specifications such as file size and which devices it works on), all the science  supporting their method (yes, they have studies and people in white lab coats saying they’re right, of course they do), precisely how their teaching methodology works, etc. as well as all the different packages and combos you can buy (do you want a small, medium, or large? the bronze, silver, or gold package, sir? would you like fries with that?) – I’ll leave the selling up to them.

You didn’t come here to get what you can already just get straight from their own site, you came here to get the perspective of another person (preferably someone who is/was in a similar position to you, i.e. a Spanish learner) and hear about what their own personal experience was with the course, so that’s what I’m giving you.

Let’s get started!

The Good

1. It teaches and emphasizes modern, everyday, spoken, Latin American Spanish: This is precisely what the overwhelming majority of Spanish learners are looking for.  There are some exceptions, such as those in the U.K. who are more interested in learning Iberian Spanish (Spanish as it’s spoken in Spain AKA “Peninsular Spanish”), those who are, for whatever reason, more interested in learning written Spanish or the formalities of proper Spanish grammar (these are usually students who need it for a class, typically a university level one, or an exam like the AP exams in the U.S.).  I have recommendations for these people towards the end of the article so if you’re one of them do please stick around regardless.

Having been learning Spanish for nearly five years now, watched hundreds of hours of modern, popular, Spanish-language TV shows and movies, and most importantly having many friends from Colombia, Mexico, and elsewhere who are native Spanish speakers and who live and have lived their entire lives in such Spanish-speaking countries, I can tell you the most vital aspect of this course is…

Yes, this is how people actually talk.  Praise Jesus!  A course that finally gets it right!  They teach you to speak Spanish just as native speakers do right now in their normal everyday lives.  They include the more formal and proper Spanish that you would need to know, that you would be expected to know, such as how to talk to someone you would typically be expected to be especially respectful of (your girlfriend’s grandmother, a police officer during a traffic stop, a potential business partner during a meeting, etc.), but they don’t include a lot of the outdated and unnecessary “old school” Spanish that a lot of courses and textbooks do.  They do include, in fact this is the majority of what they teach, lots of informal, friendly, common speech.  Yes, you learn the proper and more formal greetings of Buenos días (Good day), Buenas tardes (Good afternoon), and Buenas noches (Good evening).  But you also learn “Hola, ¡que tal!”, which is how friends greet each other and would roughly translate to something like “Hey, what’s up!”.  That’s what I’m talking about.  So, nicely done there…

2.  The entire course, all the material, is accessible via their website (which you can download it all from if you like) as well as on CD: This is how most people will want to use the course, just log into the website and start using it – everything is there for you and well organized.  Any sort of audio or video file can be played/streamed directly on the site, there’s no need to download anything unless you want to, which you can and it’s very easy to do so (each lesson has links to download all the audio files and other material) if you want to, for example, listen to it on your MP3 player later while driving to work or exercising.  You can also get the course in the form of CDs which makes sense for people without a good internet connection.  They’ve really covered all their bases here: most people will just want the website while occasionally downloaded a lesson here or there to put on a MP3 player later, a few people will want to download the whole course, and a very few people will need the CDs.

(this is an actual screen shot from inside the course website, as I promised you above)

3. The record-and-compare-your-speech-to-a-native-speaker thingamajig: With all of the Spanish they teach you, they break it down into individual words and phrases below each lesson that you can practice each one individually like so:

Now, stick with me here.  You see each one of those little blue “Play” buttons?  Well clicking them expands it into this:

There are two recordings there that can be played and one which can be recorded onto: the tutor saying the phrase in question (in this case “Me llamo Amy”) and then the recording of you saying the phrase which, I’m pleased to say, you can record and re-record over and over again as many times as you like until you get it right.

This allows you to listen to the native speaker saying the phrase and then immediately repeat after them while recording it, and to then immediately play the native speaker saying it and then the recording of you saying it so you can compare them.  Like I said you can do this over and over again, recording over the previous recording of yourself, as many times as you like until you get it right and sound just like the native speaker, which is ultimately the goal now isn’t it?  Very cool!

3. The Roleplays

On a similar note are the roleplays where they have you act out the part of a speaker in a conversation that took place during the lesson (so yes, you’re already at least somewhat familiar with the conversation).

They’re teaching you how to take part in a regular Spanish conversation, which is what most people are interested in learning how to do, so props to them there.

4. The Scheduler:

It’s a small bar at the top of your homepage (which they call “My Dashboard”) that allows you to set up a schedule for your lessons.  You pick which days of the week you want to do your lessons on and then when you do you earn points and those days turn green, whereas days you missed are grayed out and labeled as a “Missed Day”.

You can see I’ve selected Saturday, Sunday, and Monday as my learning days – you can select any combination you want – so if you look at the picture of the scheduler I took previously you’ll see Saturday is labeled as missed since I didn’t do anything whereas Sunday and Monday are green since I did, and all other days are “Pass days” where I’m not scheduled to do any lessons.

This serves as a fantastic way of keeping track of which lessons you’ve done, which ones you’re scheduled to do and when, which days you’ve successfully completed and which you haven’t.  Most importantly: it’s a motivational device that keeps your ass in gear by helping you stay disciplined and on-schedule.  Most people, myself included, have days where they “just don’t feel like it” and this does a great job of helping you overcome that and stick with it.

5. The ‘Study Plan’

All this is, is simply everything (all the lessons and supplemental material) laid out for you in logical, sequential order so that you can just start at the beginning and go straight through without having to worry about what to do next.  They’ve already sort it out for you, though of course you can skip around to wherever you like, and this ‘Study Plan’ is placed right smack dab in the middle of your homepage (what they call ‘My Dashboard’) just below the scheduler that tells you what you’ve done and where you left off previously, so there’s no confusion about what lessons you’ve done and which ones are next and need to be done.  Very simple, no confusion, makes perfect sense, and it’s super easy to use.  Nicely done there.

Note that what you see above is only a small portion of it, it’s the first of 8 sections worth of lessons they have.

6.  The testing: Wow.  It’s extensive.  And I mean that in a very good way, I think proper testing is an extraordinarily effective form of review that really cements what you just learned into your memory for you so you have the ability to recall it on demand later when you need it (such as when you’re trying to talk to someone in Spanish).

The way it works is that you’re tested in various ways on the material you just learned in each lesson and you rate it in one of 5 different ways based on how hard it was for you:

1. Not At All.
2. Needs Work.
3. So So.
4. Pretty Good.
5. It’s Easy.

Simple.

There are 5 different ways that you’re tested, I’ll use the first as the example:

“Hear It Say It”: You hear a native speaker say a word or phrase from the lesson (it cycles through all of them), which you then record yourself saying and play back for comparison (you can, as before, do this as many times as you like), like so:

then you hit the blue “Reveal” button where it shows you what was said and its meaning, at which point you rate the difficulty using the buttons at the bottom:

You then do this with all the rest where you’re tested on your writing ability by having to correctly write (with correct spelling and accent marks) the word or phrase you hear the native speaker say aloud, your pronunciation and reading ability where you have to say a word out loud that you see written in front of you, a roleplay that’s much more intricate (and difficult if you choose) than the one shown earlier that was part of the actual lesson.  In this roleplay you can choose from 6 levels of difficulty and you take part in an actual conversation such as this example from Lesson 1.3 (very basic stuff because it’s only the third lesson of the entire course):

and that’s just a portion of the conversation, I couldn’t fit the rest in.  Last is a short multiple-choice quiz where you’re asked about factual details of the conversation (e.g. “What would Amy like to drink?”) and you have to answer in Spanish.

7. The forum: it’s a straight-forward internet forum like what you’ve probably used before (AKA a “bulletin board” if you’re really old-school) where you can not only converse with and get help from your fellow Rocket Spanish students who are also taking the same course but which also has Rocket Spanish staff members and instructors to help you with whatever you need (I kept an eye on it for a couple of weeks and noticed that they always replied very promptly, usually within an hour or so of a question directed at them being posted).  It’s very active with several thousand threads and many new posts every day.  Their staff is made up of Spanish teachers, native Spanish speakers, and tech support people (for any technical problems/questions you might have concerning the website, files, or software you can download).

It’s broken down into two main areas:

The Spanish area that includes the following sections:

• Conversations in Spanish where you can practice Spanish with your fellow students and get help from staff.
• Culture and Travel for discussion of anything related to the culture in or travel to Spanish-speaking countries.
• Spanish Feedback and Comments where you can leave feedback for the staff on how the course is working for you.
• Spanish Grammar
• Spanish Vocab

And the “General Area” for discussion of whatever random topic you like or for posting about any technical issues with the website; they also put any news and updates about Rocket Spanish here.

8. The note-taking function: at the bottom of nearly every page is a very simple note-taking function that allows you to write down notes about whatever you want which are then stored in your account for you for later reference.  Here’s an example I wrote up for you from Lesson 1.3 where I made a note like what a beginner might about the distinction between saying “I want” and “I would like” in Spanish:

Simple but extremely useful.

Tired of listening to me talk?  Check out the official Rocket Spanish website (read about the spec’s and features, try the free demo, etc.)

The Neutral

1. The badges and point system: some people will like this, others won’t care, but it certainly doesn’t cause any problems so if you like it, yay, if not then don’t worry about it.  What it is, is a motivational tool where you get points for doing all sorts of various activities (lessons, tests, posting in the forum, etc.) and then you get badges for certain amounts of points, and finally you get ranked against all your fellow students like so:

Cool, but not really something that does anything for me personally (though I know there are a lot of people who love this sort of stuff and it’s a great motivational tool for them and that’s great, use it if that’s the case).

2. The ‘My Vocab’ tool: This is sort of like their own version of Anki (a popular electronic flashcard program I recommend) but not as good.  I’ll just stick with Anki, thanks.  Though I will say it does have the advantage of being able to easily and automatically add vocab from the Rocket Spanish lessons to it thereby allowing you to avoid having to manually enter it by hand like you would have to do with Anki.

3. ‘Advanced Learning Techniques’: This is just a big collection of articles on language learning that they have, though I will say I saw several good and potentially valuable pieces in there including articles covering both Professor Arguelles’ Scriptorium technique and his Shadowing technique, but of course all this information is available elsewhere online for free, so I don’t consider it a big bonus, but it is nice that they’ve condensed and organized it all for you there.  Not a big deal but certainly not a downside either.

4. The games: They’re ok for what they are and I would say maybe a minor benefit since they do seem like they would be a great little way to get some Spanish learning done if you’ve only got a few minutes, like if you’re waiting in line at the bank or spending 45 seconds in an elevator or something like that.  They’re just very simple little video games designed to teach/reinforce Spanish vocabulary and grammar, such as this one where you have to correctly arrange the letters of a Spanish word so the little spaceman can walk across the bridge to his spaceship:

Meh.  They’re not a problem, certainly, but I can’t say I’m likely to use them at any point, personally.

Official Rocket Spanish website

The Bad

1. Not good if you’re interested in Iberian Spanish (Spanish as it’s spoken in Spain): Obviously since they advertise their course as one focused on Latin American Spanish, if you’re interested in some other type of Spanish then maybe that’s not such a good thing.  Having studied both I will say that there is a significant difference between Latin American Spanish and Iberian Spanish – hell, there are big differences between the various types of Latin American Spanish, e.g. North Mexican vs. Colombian costeña vs. the Southern Cone/Argentinian dialects (there are tons of various dialects, multiple ones per country usually, in Latin America, there is no one single ‘Latin American dialect’ really, that’s just silly).

I will also say that this matters least for a beginner since, in this case, you’re learning just the very fundamentals of Spanish that are the same throughout the world.  However, on the other hand, they are teaching a lot of slang and expressions in this course, many of which are only in common use in Latin America and not Spain, sooo…

It’s kind of a tough call and one you’ll have to make yourself.  I do know that a lot of my readers are in the U.K. (they’re 2nd only in size to my American readership, Canada is 3rd if you’re curious) and in my experience Spanish-learners in the U.K. tend to be overwhelmingly interested in learning Iberian Spanish since they want to use their Spanish to speak to people in/from Spain due to the U.K.’s proximity to that country.

2. Not good for studying for a specific class/exam such as DELE/CEFR/AP: I mean, it’s ok for that purpose, but it’s not at all designed for it and there are lots of other study materials that are (search Amazon for “DELE”, “CEFR Spanish”, and “AP Spanish”), so if you’re interested in this course as something to help you with those then that’s fine – it will help with the speaking/conversational portions of it – but definitely keep in mind that it’s going to be a secondary supplementary type of material at best, and that at worst it might actually screw you up since those tests are focused on very proper, formal Iberian Spanish and this course teaches a mostly informal Latin American style of Spanish.

3. Saying that the basic level version of this course will get you to “good conversational level” is a bit of a stretch: Now, they seem to know better than to use the word “fluency” or “fluent” since that’s such a loaded word in language-learning/linguistics circles due to its lack of official definition (which is why no respected institute uses it and instead usually do a “competency level” type of system like *CEFR’s A1, A2, B1, B2, etc. scheme), but they do say that the basic level course will get you to a “Good conversational level” but they don’t really define what they think that is.

*CEFR is the Common European Framework for Reference of Languages, since I know you’re wondering – it’s the method of teaching, learning, and assessing languages set by a European Union Council Resolution that’s been used as the standard in Europe for evaluating language ability and has become the most common and accepted standard worldwide.  Ability is ranked using a simple scale of ratings: A1, A2, B1, B2, C1, C2; with A1 being the most basic and C2 being the most advanced.

Look, here’s my assessment: I would say the basic level course will get you to the point where you can speak clearly at a normal conversational rate of speed with a native speaker about the subjects that were covered in that course.  Now, do they cover a fairly wide swath of subjects in even just the beginner’s level course?  Yes.  Is it comprehensive enough such that after completing it you could talk with a native speaker about just about any normal everyday topic (news stories, family life, politics, etc.) and be able to express yourself as you wish and understand everything they say?  No, not even close.  It’s nowhere near that comprehensive and, frankly, to be fair to them it’s not really practical to make it that comprehensive since that would result in a much, much larger course with far more emphasis on learning and practicing new vocabulary (because that’s the limiting factor after you learn basic grammar, syntax, and pronunciation) than would be practical or than would really be appealing to most of their customers (who are just looking for a basic Spanish course to get them kick-started in learning the language, not a comprehensive we’ll-stuff-the-entirety-of-the-Spanish-language-in-your-head-for-you course).

If you’ll please keep reading, and especially pay attention to the below segments on who I recommend this course for and how I recommend you use it, you’ll get what I’m saying here and see that it’s not necessarily a bad thing.  I just wanted to temper their vague claims of “you’ll be conversational!” with a little bit of detail and practicality.  They’re not lying, they’re just being as optimistic as possible about the results someone might get with their product which is, of course, exactly what we’d expect an advertiser to do, it’s what all of them do, right?  So you can’t really blame them for that, I think we all expect that when we know we’re looking at/listening to a sales pitch.

4. The record/compare function has a rather annoying quirk: That function I’ve mentioned enthusiastically several times already that allows you to record and compare yourself with a native speaker saying the same phrase?  Yeah, it works fine and all but it’s got this annoying, stupid little problem with the way it works – note the blue play button on the far right side of the function in the screenshot below:

That plays both the native speaker saying the phrase and you saying the phrase…at the same time.  Ok.  What I think they meant to do here was allow you to hit just one button that plays the native speaker first and then immediately after that plays you, and that makes perfect sense.  The problem is what it actually does is play them both at the same time so what you get is this garbled mess of both you and the native speaker saying the phrase at the same time.  This isn’t particularly useful.

Now, is it a big deal?  No: see the blue play buttons on the far left, one for each recording?  Ok those play each individual recording one at a time, so you can just click the top play button to hear the native speaker and then the bottom one to hear yourself.  No problem.  It’s just that it’s initially confusing and kind of annoying (and dumb that they designed it this way) and they need to fix it.

5. It would be seriously improved with some graphics and, in particular, videos: this isn’t an actual aspect of the course as it exists that causes problems, just a complaint about something that doesn’t exist in it, does exist in other (admittedly more expensive) courses, and would be nice to have here.  That’s all.  Videos please!

6. The ‘MegaSpanish’ game wouldn’t work on my computer: they have a game you can download, I imagine it’s not much better than the others (not that I really care about the games so I don’t see this as much of a downside, but anyway…) but when I downloaded it to evaluate it for this review it constantly crashed and generated an error message.

Now, here’s the good news about that, interestingly enough: it gave me an excuse to test their customer service/tech support and I was very pleased with the results: I was contacted within an hour of sending an e-mail to them by one of their customer service representatives and told that the problem was that they just hadn’t updated the game to work with my particular version of OSX (the operating system Macs run, which to be fair to them had just been updated to the new version that was released about a week prior by Apple).  Honestly I should probably have added this under the “The Good” section and labeled it “Good customer service” because it was.

Official Rocket Spanish website

Who This Course is For

• Someone more interested in learning to speak Spanish than read or write it (they do teach reading and writing but speaking is far more heavily emphasized).
• Someone specifically interested in learning Latin American Spanish.
• Someone who wants to learn the more informal, colloquial, common, everyday type of spoken Spanish that native speakers regularly use to converse (basically the Spanish version of the kind of English you probably use throughout most of your day to talk to friends and colleagues and such), including idioms, slang, and expressions (I think they might even have some curse words in one of the short little e-books they offer you but I’m not sure).
• A beginner who knows very little if any Spanish.
• Someone with regular internet access.  Frankly you could probably get away with 56k dial-up since there aren’t any videos as part of the course.  You can just buy the CDs, yes, so this isn’t really hard-and-fast but they definitely seem to be making the website version of the product the primary one with the best features, and of course you’ll need to use the website to access the forum.
• Anyone planning on traveling to a Spanish-speaking country sometime in the next 6-18 months or so – that’ll give you enough time to get through at least the intermediate level course plus work on your Spanish using other methods like my Telenovela Method and by practicing with native speakers via language exchanges held on Skype and such.  By the time your trip rolls around you should be conversationally fluent or pretty close to it.
• Anyone who has Spanish-speaking friends, colleagues, or relatives they’d like to be able to talk to and understand using informal, everyday Spanish.

Look at the above list and figure out how many of those apply to you.  They’re just criteria, and fitting one doesn’t mean you should buy it.  It also matters how important each one is to you (maybe you have Spanish-speaking relatives but they’re in-laws and you hate their guts so you’re not really that interested in being able to talk to them except maybe to curse at them in their own native tongue).

Official Rocket Spanish website

Who It’s Not For

• Anyone who really wants to learn, specifically, Iberian Spanish.  There are other courses out there that focus on that particular dialect like Rosetta Stone and Assimil.
• Anyone who’s more interested in learning to read, write, or merely comprehend spoken Spanish (you just want to be able to understand Spanish movies, music, etc.).  For reading/writing I’d suggest the Practice Makes Perfect series you can find on Amazon and for listening comprehension I’d suggest Assimil because of their emphasis on doing a “silent period” where you just listen to and read the language for the first couple of months.
• Anyone who’s studying Spanish solely for a specific test, exam, or class (especially if it’s university-level).  For a class, use the textbook and any other material specific to that course (notes, supplemental material like books recommended by the teacher, etc.) – that’s what you’re going to be tested on and your ultimate goal here is to pass the test (with the highest score possible), so it doesn’t make sense to waste your time learning things you’re not going to be tested on.  If you’re studying for the AP Spanish exam here in the U.S., there are plenty of books specifically designed to help you study for that test you can find on Amazon.  If you’re studying for the DELE/CEFR-Spanish (basically the same thing) exam, again, same story.
• Anyone who’s traveling to a Spanish-speaking country in the next few days or weeks and needs a crash course in Spanish right friggin’ now.  For you I’d recommend Synergy Spanish and maybe a phrase book (this is the best one in my opinion and it’s dirt-cheap to boot).

How I Would Use this Course to Help Me Learn Spanish

I would use this course as one part of a whole Spanish-learning system where I would spend about 30 minutes a day doing a lesson from this course then I would spend maybe 45 minutes to an hour doing the Telenovela Method (where I learn Spanish from Spanish-language popular media like movies, TV shows, music, books, etc.), and then maybe another 30-60 minutes actually practicing the Spanish I learned that day and just practicing speaking Spanish in general by doing a language exchange with a native speaker (more on language exchanges here if you’re interested), so that comes out to 1.5-2 hours per day and that’s actually fairly minimal – you could easily stretch that to 3-4 hours a day if you wanted to (just make the Telenovela Method and language exchange portions longer and divide them up throughout the day, e.g. 1 hour in the morning, 2 after work, and then 1 more after dinner).

You’re not going to get fluent just from a course alone, I’ve honestly never, not once, heard of that happening, if for no other reason than the fact that a course can’t provide one absolutely essential and unavoidable step on the road to fluency: talking to native speakers.  Yes, you have to talk to native speakers in Spanish, badly at first, in order to learn how to talk to native speakers in Spanish.  There’s no getting around it.  No amount of preparation or memorization or lessons will make you fluent so that one day, just magically, you’ll suddenly be able to pop out of your house and, never having talked to anyone before in Spanish, be able to talk just like a native.  It doesn’t work that way.

So you have to use it in conjunction with other things.  This is fine.  Courses are great, I recommend you do get a basic Spanish course as a beginner because I’ve found most people need a well-designed, organized, and structured course to get them “kick-started” so to speak on their Spanish-learning journey.  They don’t know how to learn a language, they’ve never done it before, and so they need guidance, they need people who have done this before and actually know what they’re doing to tell them “Ok, first learn this, then do this, and now this.  Spend this long on A, this long on B, and this long doing C”, etc.  That kind of thing.  They way to do this is use a course like Rocket Spanish in conjunction with other learning techniques like watching Spanish-language TV shows, listening to Spanish-language music (like Shakira!), and, most importantly, talking with actual native speakers.  And spending your first couple months doing a basic course like Rocket Spanish (official website) is a fantastic way to get just enough Spanish under your belt that you can actually start doing short, simple language exchanges with native Spanish speakers and they won’t have to try to teach you Spanish from scratch which takes a lot of the pressure off them and also makes you a lot less nervous since you know that you do in fact speak some Spanish, and correctly at that.

My Overall Take on this Course

It’s excellent for what it is.  On a scale of 1 to 10 I’d probably give it about a 7.5-8.0 or so.  It’s not perfect, but for the price asked for the beginner’s version (under $100 U.S. – they run deals and discounts from time to time so check their site to see for yourself what it is right now), it’s really good bang for your buck as we Americans would say, or excellent value for money as the British would say.

It’s very beginner-friendly, that’s who it’s oriented towards, it teaches modern conversational Spanish, which is what most people want, there’s a 60-day ironclad money-back guarantee that’s operated via a third party (Clickbank, that’s who you’re buying it through) so even if they’re thieving bastards or they go out of business the day after you buy it you’ll still be able to get your money back, once you purchase the course you not only get unlimited access to it via the website forever but you also get any upgrades they make to the course for free (forever).  Overall it’s a very nice deal.

If, based on what you’ve read above, you think it might be a good fit for you, I’d tell you right now to go on over to their website (here) and either just outright buy it if you’re certain (can always just return it later if you don’t like it) or if you’re not then at least sign up for the free 6-day trial (it’s in the top menu bar on the far right).

Hope that helps, let me know what you think (comments, contact form, etc.), and best of luck to you on your Spanish-learning journey (it’s worth it, I swear, and at least mostly fun along the way!).

Cheers,

Andrew