Rating: 
Summary: Good When Partnered With Written Work
Review: I self-study, using this in combination with a textbook, and it has been very effective in helping me gain confidence in actually using the language. It probably replaces the "language lab" I had when studying Spanish in college.One important note: Their customer support is excellent! I've managed to lose two disks, and they've been promptly replaced each time.
Rating:
Summary: Good When Partnered With Written Work
Review: I self-study, using this in combination with a textbook, and it has been very effective in helping me gain confidence in actually using the language. It probably replaces the "language lab" I had when studying Spanish in college. One important note: Their customer support is excellent! I've managed to lose two disks, and they've been promptly replaced each time.
Rating: 
Summary: 2 thumbs up!!!
Review: I was really amazed by all the features of this software, and it is still very affordable.
The best feature is without a doubt the speech recognition, indeed, the software is able to understand your voice, and then correct your mistakes!
It is also very complete and includes very interactive and fun activities.
It is really a pleasure to use this package.
Rating:
Summary: Great for Spanish Review
Review: I've had the program for a week and a half and am working on the second disk now. It is a very good program for reviewing Spanish (I had Spanish all through HS, through AP Spanish Lit, but I haven't used it since), but I can see how it might be difficult for the true beginner. If you're looking to review Spanish and don't want to be bored with tedious exercises about stuff you already know (or just need to be briefly reminded of), then this is the program for you. While it might not be the most entertaining program available, I haven't been bored and have learned a lot. There are many types of exercises, which keep things interesting while working different skills (reading, writing, listening, and speaking). They definitely throw you right in, but the first exercise doesn't have any wrong answers, they just want you to pick an answer and see what happens. If you roll the mouse over a word the definition pops up in a little box, which is very convenient. There are lessons for learning vocabulary and grammar, but most of the time you are left to figure things out as you go (with the help of those pop-up definitions). The first half of each lesson group is point-and-click with the mouse, while the second half uses speech recognition (one of the best features of the program), so you need a microphone. You also need a Spanish <-> English dictionary, as the built-in glossary isn't easy to negotiate. There doesn't seem to be a search function and it's all Spanish to English. You have to click on a tab for the first letter of the word, then click to advance the "pages" to get to the word you want. It's much more convenient to just reach for the dictionary than to find a word in the glossary (and I've needed to do so many times). The glossary does work well from within some parts of the lessons, where if you right click on an answer choice you can go straight to that entry in the glossary, but for others (e.g. the crosswords), you don't seem to have access to the glossary at all. Technical stuff: I have Win XP and the software has run very well on my computer except for one thing--it doesn't seem to be able to access the data for a user (or create a user) unless you run the program as an administrator. There might be some other way to get it to work, but if so, I haven't found it. No big deal, but a little annoying. The first CD installs on the computer, then when you finish that one, you just switch CDs and continue where you left off. The program doesn't ask for them--but it's pretty obvious what to do. I haven't run the audio CDs on the computer, but they seem to be entirely separate from the computer lessons. I listened to the first one, and I'd actually recommend listening to the CDs before starting the program if you are a beginner--they're much more basic.
Rating:
Summary: Great for Spanish Review
Review: I've had the program for a week and a half and am working on the second disk now. It is a very good program for reviewing Spanish (I had Spanish all through HS, through AP Spanish Lit, but I haven't used it since), but I can see how it might be difficult for the true beginner. If you're looking to review Spanish and don't want to be bored with tedious exercises about stuff you already know (or just need to be briefly reminded of), then this is the program for you. While it might not be the most entertaining program available, I haven't been bored and have learned a lot. There are many types of exercises, which keep things interesting while working different skills (reading, writing, listening, and speaking). They definitely throw you right in, but the first exercise doesn't have any wrong answers, they just want you to pick an answer and see what happens. If you roll the mouse over a word the definition pops up in a little box, which is very convenient. There are lessons for learning vocabulary and grammar, but most of the time you are left to figure things out as you go (with the help of those pop-up definitions). The first half of each lesson group is point-and-click with the mouse, while the second half uses speech recognition (one of the best features of the program), so you need a microphone. You also need a Spanish <-> English dictionary, as the built-in glossary isn't easy to negotiate. There doesn't seem to be a search function and it's all Spanish to English. You have to click on a tab for the first letter of the word, then click to advance the "pages" to get to the word you want. It's much more convenient to just reach for the dictionary than to find a word in the glossary (and I've needed to do so many times). The glossary does work well from within some parts of the lessons, where if you right click on an answer choice you can go straight to that entry in the glossary, but for others (e.g. the crosswords), you don't seem to have access to the glossary at all. Technical stuff: I have Win XP and the software has run very well on my computer except for one thing--it doesn't seem to be able to access the data for a user (or create a user) unless you run the program as an administrator. There might be some other way to get it to work, but if so, I haven't found it. No big deal, but a little annoying. The first CD installs on the computer, then when you finish that one, you just switch CDs and continue where you left off. The program doesn't ask for them--but it's pretty obvious what to do. I haven't run the audio CDs on the computer, but they seem to be entirely separate from the computer lessons. I listened to the first one, and I'd actually recommend listening to the CDs before starting the program if you are a beginner--they're much more basic.
Rating:
Summary: What is Immersion Anyway?
Review: This is a response to the review NOT for true beginners, March 5, 2004 Reviewer: A software user from Somewhereinthe USA. You may be a software user, but you don't know what immersion means. Perhaps you should look it up! It's sink or swim with a foriegn language. You should know that there are immersion schools around the world that operate on this basis. How do you think babies learn to talk?
Rating:
Summary: What is Immersion Anyway?
Review: This is a response to the review NOT for true beginners, March 5, 2004 Reviewer: A software user from Somewhereinthe USA. You may be a software user, but you don't know what immersion means. Perhaps you should look it up! It's sink or swim with a foriegn language. You should know that there are immersion schools around the world that operate on this basis. How do you think babies learn to talk?
Rating: 
Summary: Foreign Service Spanish Program
Review: This is for Magellan and everyone else who tried finding the Spanish teaching program used by the American Foreign Service. I ran into it on a shelf at, uh, Borders Books. The title is:
Barron's Mastering Spanish, 2nd Edition. ISBN: 0-7641-7597-1 Barron's hypes it as as the program used by our foreign service. And there are two Flavors: Level One and Level Two. Same format in both, 12 CDs and a textbook. Same price for each level: $79.95. (The software here insists I rate the program, but I have no idea what it's worth, so I gave it 3 stars, to satisfy the implacable electrons.)
Rating:
Summary: Foreign Service Spanish Program
Review: This is for Magellan and everyone else who tried finding the Spanish teaching program used by the American Foreign Service. I ran into it on a shelf at, uh, Borders Books. The title is:
Barron's Mastering Spanish, 2nd Edition. ISBN: 0-7641-7597-1 Barron's hypes it as as the program used by our foreign service. And there are two Flavors: Level One and Level Two. Same format in both, 12 CDs and a textbook. Same price for each level: $79.95. (The software here insists I rate the program, but I have no idea what it's worth, so I gave it 3 stars, to satisfy the implacable electrons.)
Rating:
Summary: This Software is mad Hot!
Review: This Software is whaz' up. I tried learning Spanish with Learn Spanish Now from Transparent Language. That software was
alright. But like I said Spanish Deluxe is whaz' up. The speech recognition is really what's poppin. Me and my baby mama be using it all the time to learn Spanish. She half Dominican but she don't speak no Spanish. She feel like she ain't a true Dominicana until she learns to speak the language. And I wanted to learn Spanish too because where we live everybody strictly Dominican. I'm like the only Moreno. She bought the Learning Spanish Like Crazy lessons and I got the Spanish Delux. We be using both Spanish Deluxe and the Learning Spanish Like Crazy lessons everyday. Both Spanish courses is hot and now we both be learning Spanish like crazy. My bad.... Let me refrase that. We learning Spanish like "loco." All the Dominicans in my 'hood be like "yo papi where you learn Spanish?"
Ta' bien. Papi Morenito representing El Barrio to the fullest - One love - Mi Gente.
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