Customer Reviews

Instant Immersion Spanish Pro 7 CD Platinum

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(11)

 

 

I grew up in Miami and my wife is from South America. We speak english, but I have certainly learned some basic spanish over the years. Some other reviewers had said that you cannot be a complete novice and use this Spanish product, but I figured I would have the basic spanish necessary given my background. Let me just say, it's difficult to get much out of this product even with some understanding of spanish basics. This is not just due to the "immersion" teaching method, but more due to the products disorganized content, poor user interface, and general lack of structure.

My chief complaints with this product are as follows:

1) The product description says "You'll be guided through lessons...", which is completely inaccurate! --- There are no "lessons", just groups of activities based on skill level. And there is no "guiding" strucutre to it all. You simply jump into a skil level, pick an activity, and go. And the activities simply "test" rather than "teach". For example, you are thrown into conversational segments on the very first lesson where you must pick theright answer (out of three possible ones) in response to a question posed to you in spanish. At no point is there a "lesson" to teach you what you are supposed to know.

2) The user interface is really bad. --- The designers of this interactive product decided to use a "movie set" metaphor for the navigation. And trust me, the result is just as disorganized as a movie set. Every button is a graphical object with no text label (although if you hold your mouse over an object long enough it the text label will appear). If there were only a few buttons, and if the graphics wer super intuitive, this would be fine. But there are way too many buttons at once and the graphics dont make the button's purpose obvious. The whole movie set and movie scene thing is way too forced and ends up making the navigation difficult and cryptic.

3) My third complaint is much smaller, but still relevant... The accent of speakers in this product use the spanish language accent from SPAIN. --- While I understand this is a convention among some teachers / teaching products, the truth is that barely anyone speaks spanish with the Spanish accent in the US. The "th" sound in place of "s", as well as some muting of certain sylables) is extremely annoying if you are used to hearing spanish from any of the south/latin american countries. Anyway, just be farwarned.

I wouldn't recommend this program, especially to a beginner. I've had 4 years of spanish a couple years ago and I wanted to improve my vocabulary and grammar and found it very difficult to do with this program. I also felt that someone coming in with no knowledge of spanish would be very frustrated and confused by this program. It gives menu choices of different things you can learn, grammar, vocabulary etc, but it doesn't tell you where it's best to start from. Also, if someone doesn't understand terms like "Subjunctive" and "Indicitive Gerrund" this would be even harder to understand. I'd definately recommend not to buy this program. I returned mine and now I am looking for a new program to try. good luck!

I think that this system is excellant for people who have basic knowledge of the Spanish language. The pronunciation and dialogue lessons are very valuable. It is helpful to be able to "have a conversation" with the software to understand and practice the flow of a Spanish conversation.
But I think that it is misleading to say that this is for beginers. There is VERY little lessons about basic vocabulary and word definitions. And the grammar lessons are very few. This will help with conversation and pronunciation only.

I made the mistake of buying this software at Best Buy, which has a no-return policy once you open software. Big Mistake!! I will stick to buying online from now on where I can check reviews of the products first.

This product is basically worthless to someone trying to learn Spanish. There is no structure to the lessons at all, even the first one is pretty much impossible for someone that is new to Spanish. There is virtually nothing that teaches you basic words and grammar, other than a glossary of words...what use is that to a beginner?! I wanted to learn simple conversational Spanish, and this product is of no help for that at all. Only someone with a couple years of Spanish would find this product useful. Something that they totally fail to tell you on the packaging.

I bought this progarm, and returned it after a few days. The program is loaded with bells and whistles, none of which are helpful. This is not a good program if you are learning Spanish. I notice that the only positive review is from someone who aready spoke Spanish when he bought the program. This makes sense as the program is absolutely worthless to the student begining to study Spanish. I agree with most of the others who reviewed this program. There is no real attempt to teach the language. The program is simply a vast collection of material designed to test your knowledge of Spanish, not to teach it. The program is selling the sizzle, not the steak as they say.

This is an effective language learning program. most of the negative reviews revolved around the difficulty of the content, the lack of guidance or the "unorganized" interface. I feel the approach of this software is one of the best in its price range. lets face it, learning a language is difficult no matter what claims are made on the box! this program (like the name suggests) immerses you in spanish language. it's your job as a motivated student to find your way around (not unlike stepping of a plane in a foreign country) and in the process learn a good amount of spanish. yes, the video appears difficult at first but you can pause it at anytime and if you right click on any word you get a translation and pronuciation of the word. you can also click on the translation button and see the text in english as you hear it being spoken. there is even a control panel where you can change the difficulty level and the speed of dialog among other things. the grammar sections are comprehensive and there are plenty of exercises which relate to and reinforce the lessons. the interface and navigation bar lets you jump to any are of the program you want to work on. the exercises change depending on which lesson is selected and there is a progress screen where you can track your progress. if you supplement what you learn here with other stuff like watching your favorite dvd's with the spanish subtitles on or reading bilingual magazines you will really benefit from the solid foundation this software offers.

I bought this trusting its saying that they have the best method and did not learn anything before giving up. I also bought it in a store and was not allowed to return it because of their crapy return policy (I am now considering a boycott of Best Buy). I am looking for a program that will teach someone who has no knowledge of Spanish at all. If you know of this please email me at Benny365@hotmail.com
Thanks
Ben

This UK-produced language-learning software title is pretty bad. I'm glad I paid nothing for it after rebate (except sales tax).

The box design is attractive, and you think you are getting a good deal with 7 CDs. But opening the package you'll find no manual, just a single installation note apparently written by a non-English speaker. The installation program is a joke; it would crash on my Windows 2000 machine unless I chose the "maximum" option. Very crude indeed.

Then, I ran the demo as instructed, which doesn't even have a quit button! I had to use Task Manager to kill the program! Not to mention that annoying, echoing "Tell Me More" at the beginning. Really annoying... childishly so.

Which brings us to the actual content of the package. There are 4 components to this "deluxe" package. Four CDs make up the Tell Me More program, which is basically a language exercise program. For example, in one set of exercises you'll be asked questions and expected to answer them. The computer will analyze your answer and respond accordingly. In another set, you watch some poorly produced video footages and just listen along. There are also word puzzles like hangman, etc. Overall a very poorly put-together package. For some reason, it would only run in 256 colors on my machine, which is a very unpleasant experience.

Another CD contains a program called Spanish Plus basically teaches you the language, and this is where you should start, since Tell Me More requires you know something about the language already. But there's not too much material in Spanish Plus to make a satisfying learning experience. And sometimes the program would just crash on my Win2k machine.

A third component is a vocabulary builder CD-ROM. Again, very crude. The 4th CD-ROM is an audio CD, although I actually haven't been able to play it in my portable CD player so I don't even know whether it works or how it is. Judging from the other reviews, not good.

I also bought the German package, and was glad I didn't open it so I could return it after finding out how poor the Spanish package was.

If you can get this for free, it can indeed be a good value if you don't mind the poor interface and poor exercises. Otherwise, do not spend money on this.

After opening this product and finding no manual to tell me where to start I was about ready to take the disks out in the yard and break them. After I got disk 1 loaded I found it was not for beginners. Without prior knowlege of Spanish you can't even get started. I read a review (on Amazon.com) that said Rosetta Stone was the best program and found out that the #7 "Spanish Plus" disk is produced by Rosetta Stone. This is the beginners disk, disk #7. Who woulda thunk it? With this I was able to begin learning simple words and phrases and eventually move up to the other disks.

My question is: Why don't they have instructions that tell beginners to start with disk 7. The program is OK...

This series would be ok for practicing and learning pronunciation, BUT the whole layout of the software is EXTREMELY confusing.

Even worse, most of the vocabulary used in the lessons aren't even in the glossary, which really confuses you.

So, only buy this CD if you want to practice pronunciation. DO NOT buy it if you're starting from scratch, and don't have any foundation in grammar or vocabulary.