Learn Spanish: Fluenz Spanish (Latin America) 1+2 with supplemental Audio CDs and Podcasts

by Fluenz

Product Features

• 60 sessions of up to two and one-half hours each -- the most comprehensive software application covering the first two levels of Spanish anywhere. Fluenz Spanish 1+2 will guide you in English through the challenges of Spanish with a proven system.
• Includes Fluenz Spanish 1 and Fluenz Spanish 2 DVD-ROMs, two audio CDs for additional learning, exclusive, downloadable podcasts for further practice, and the handy Fluenz Navigator for on-the-go referencing of important words and phrases.
• The Fluenz language tutor guides you on video every step of the way, recreating a one-on-one tutoring experience, utilizing explanations in English, placing you in real-world contexts, and immersing you in the culture.
• Fluenz blends a video tutor with a range of engaging, interactive workouts to improve your reading, writing, listening, and speaking skills in a unique approach that is currently being used by the US Navy, senior personnel at the UN and UNICEF, executives of Fortune 500 companies, students at Harvard Business School and other leading universities.
• Please be aware that we cannot guarantee third-party sellers are providing the program's latest version. Older versions of the program are unlikely to work on Mac Lion OS, Mac Mountain Lion OS or Windows 8. Fluenz cannot support programs purchased through third-party sellers. To guarantee that you're getting the latest version make sure your shopping cart indicates "Sold by Fluenz", whether it is fulfilled by Amazon or directly by Fluenz.ć

Product Details

• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces
• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B0010YBZ1I
• Date first available at Amazon.com: December 6, 2007
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (86 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,138 in Software (See Top 100 in Software)

Product Description

Amazon.com

The only interactive language program offering an immersive environment that recreates the best elements of great one-on-one tutoring.

Be Fluent in Spanish
On-screen tutor Sonia Gil, a recent Cornell graduate, and alumni from Harvard and the University of Chicago created Fluenz Spanish to be the kind of application they had always wanted when learning languages. The result of their work is ideal for those who seek common sense explanations, sophisticated workouts that lead to real learning, and who thrive on a great teacher to keep them focused and engaged.

How Fluenz gets you there: A real on-screen tutor who guides you every step of the way. Using English to help you learn Spanish. Teaching relevant material from the very beginning.

The Most Comprehensive Program to Learn Spanish

Love Spanish, Actually Learn It
The team of passionate language learners behind Fluenz Spanish wanted to move beyond what they felt was wrong with computer language education: simplistic methods that boast a natural, passive way to learn a language, and those that treat adults like children. Instead, Fluenz brings the magic of a great teacher to lead, challenge, and inspire adults and teens with real learning.

An Inspirational Tutor Leads and Delights Learners
Anyone learning a language knows about "the magical moment," that day out in the real world when you can form a full sentence and actually understand the response. By clearly showing how Spanish works in a way that makes the most sense to English speakers, Fluenz tutor Sonia Gil creates a path to that special moment. Just as importantly, the tutor explains how Spanish works in terms of cultural issues, providing context and anecdotes that make the process meaningful. By making sense of the language, learners actually learn.

Recreating Great One-On-One Tutoring
Fluenz Spanish is divided into sessions that are introduced and led by a tutor on video. After a realistic conversation between native Spanish speakers, the tutor returns to give a full tutorial on all the new words and structures to be learned in that session.

Powerful Workouts
Next comes a series of challenging workouts that provide an ideal training ground for developing the learner's reading, writing, listening, and speaking abilities. Each session features a set of clear, common sense tools that make a true difference.

Relevant Learning, Real Communication
The Fluenz approach is based on getting learners to understand how to structure relevant sentences ("I need a taxi"), rather than relying on the association of words and images to learn how to say things like "apple" or "orange," the more typical fare offered by programs that try to get you to learn like a child. Starting with clear explanations in English and following with extensive workouts, Fluenz builds steadily from useful structures like questions and commands ("Stop here, please") and useful vocabulary (related to restaurants, transportation, directions, etc.) to more and more complex communication.

Great Audio CDs and Exclusive Podcasts

The Magic of Learning: Audio CDs for Your Car or iPod
Moving beyond typically dry and hollow language learning tapes, the Fluenz team engaged two professionals who could communicate the richness and emotion of Spanish. Fluenz Spanish 1+2 comes with two audio CDs: one recorded by Edgar Ramirez, one of Hollywood's emerging Latino actors, and the other by Ivan Loscher, one of the most recognizable voices in Spanish through his work with HBO Latin America. Edgar starred opposite Keira Knightley in Domino, played the fearsome "asset" in The Bourne Ultimatum, and has worked alongside William Hurt, Forest Whitaker, and Benicio del Toro.

Fluenz Podcasts: Download to Learn on the Go
Continuing a tradition at the Fluenz Lab, Fluenz Spanish now offers exclusive podcasts made by the same team that created the interactive program. These downloadable podcasts supplement the training work offered by the audio CDs, while providing a more informal, relaxed window into the world of Spanish and the actual learning of the language.

The Fluenz Phrase Book Navigator
Fluenz Spanish also comes with the Phrase Book Navigator, a useful quick-reference guide for travelers.

What You Learn, Step By Step

1. First, Fluenz Won't Treat You Like a Kid
Fluenz was specifically designed for English speakers to gain fluency in Spanish. After much research and testing, the team behind the program found specific structures (certain verbs, nouns, and constructions) that would be easy to learn for English speakers and would accelerate their Spanish communication. The Fluenz team believes that treating adults with intelligence, rather than like children, speeds up the learning process and makes fluency a real goal.

2. Building a Useful Foundation
Fluenz Spanish begins by teaching how to form questions and statements that are useful on day one, and that share the same word order in English and Spanish (i.e. "The check, please," "I want this dish"). The team felt this was more relevant than phrases such as "The apple is green," found in other programs. For example, after only the first four sessions, learners are already able to have meaningful conversations in a restaurant.

3. Describing Location and Where You're Going
The program then shifts to describing and asking about location. In this way users can learn both the basics of how crucial verbs work, while advancing their vocabulary related to transportation and travel. Instead of memorizing words and pictures, Fluenz users actually get to understand how questions and phrases such as "Where is the hotel?" and "I'm going to the museum" both work and are used in everyday life.

4. Gain Confidence With Your Verbs
Verbs are the action words of language. In Spanish, verb forms change depending on whom they refer to, resulting in an infamous number of conjugations. Because passive memorization won't do, Fluenz thoroughly covers Spanish verbs by emphasizing the most useful ones, explaining in English how they work, and providing plenty of practice to make sure you can use them when you really need to.

5. More Ways to Power Your Communication
Another great structure that can easily be understood by English speakers is the formation of Spanish possessives ("The hotel's restaurant," "The museum's entrance"). Using possessives is a simple way to add precision and sophistication to your Spanish.

6. Great Descriptive Terms
Language without description lacks life and color, particularly in a language as vivid as Spanish. Fluenz puts great emphasis on teaching how to add this important dimension to your interactions. Plus, when traveling through a country, nothing is going to be more helpful than "bigger," "smaller," "less expensive," and those other adjectives that both make sense to English speakers and are easily used in forming sentences.

7. A Deep Foundation for Sophisticated Communication
Since the key to fluency in Spanish is being able to use all of the most common parts of speech, Fluenz covers a wide range of central grammar issues. From pronouns and prepositions to word order and commands, you'll be able to correctly form complex sentences and express yourself with solid, confident Spanish.

8. Getting There, Faster
Giving and receiving directions is both a way to continue building the essential tools of Spanish communication and a way to develop the skills anyone traveling will always need. Fluenz creates a path that gives English speakers complete control over the critical vocabulary and structures for asking questions, indicating directions, and explaining locations.

9. Easily Handle Numbers and Time
After thorough workouts enabling learners to talk about location with ease, Fluenz makes sure you master numbers and, therefore, time. From counting up to 999,999 to telling the time, Fluenz users gain control over a wide range of time-specific communication. Once time and location are joined, it becomes possible to form complex questions and statements in a variety of situations, such as planning trips or making appointments.

10. Confident Shopping and Negotiation
Throughout the program, your ability to interact in shopping situations is steadily improved. Fluenz works on the critical verb "to want" in the very beginning, and soon enough you learn how to ask about prices, make comparisons between different items, and express exactly what you're looking for. By the end of the program, you'll be able to handle shopping, price negotiations, and purchasing situations with ease.

Ideal for Communicating Wherever People Speak Spanish
Fluenz gives you the tools to communicate in all of the most important and common situations you're bound to face while in the Spanish-speaking world. Whether you are traveling or need to talk to a client, student, or patient, Fluenz Spanish 1+2 provides the strongest possible foundation.

What's in the Box

Product Description

Discover Spanish through the magic of a great teacher

Fluenz Spanish is based on three principles:

1) There's no substitute for a great tutor. It's often difficult to motivate yourself to learn a language on your own. Having a teacher to challenge and inspire you, while explaining exactly how the language works, makes all the difference.
2) The best way for adults to learn Spanish is with explanations in English. For example, it is impossible to understand the difference between the critical Spanish verbs "ser" and "estar" without a clear explanation in English. With Fluenz, a real tutor guides you in English along a path specifically designed for Spanish.
3) It's best to learn the most relevant words in Spanish right away. Fluenz has you handling a wide range of real-world situations right from the start.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

461 of 466 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Fluenz and Rosetta August 18, 2008

By Java R.

After working for several months with Rosetta Stone I decided to give Fluenz a try. There seems to be a bit of an argument between these two so I figured I could benefit by standing on solid middle ground. Truth is, there is such middle ground, but also both products are opposed to each other in many respects. By this I mean that I have profited from learning with both, but because they are so different. These are the highlights of my experience:

1. Rosetta Stone will bombard you with words, many of them, one after the other. That's their strength. The idea is that you learn words by matching them to pictures. They have technology to recognize your voice, and it works. But you do feel like a child, because many words are irrelevant and a little childish, because you don't understand what's going on beyond the words thrown at you, and the words and images just keep on coming. That's how you start.

2. Fluenz begins with a teacher, Sonya, who explains the whole program, how it works, whats coming next, etc, etc. Half-way through the introduction I just skipped to the first lesson because I wanted to know what it was all about. And what I found is that right off the bat I was coming up with my own sentences, understanding how they worked, and using the verbs with different nouns. First you hear a conversation for which you can see subtitles, then the teacher Sonya come and gives a really good explanation of how it all works, and then you plunge into exercises that gradually take you up in terms of difficulty. Both the teaching and the exercises make the whole thing exciting because you can see the progress right there.

3. Back to Rosetta, the program falters when it comes to actual sentences and phrases. Truth is the matching of images and words is fun and I can go on forever, but when it comes to full phrases I wanted to understand how they were put together. Also the voice recognition technology is for words, not full phrases. On the positive side I kind of like their open-ended thing where there are no lessons per se, no organization beyond what you make up as you go along.

4. Back to Fluenz. I already knew many of the words from having worked with Rosetta, but I was still pretty unclear on how to use tehm, and that's where Fluenz really shines. They explain how the language works and manage to keep you practicing so that your sentences are solid. And I appreciate the confidence of knowing that I'm saying something right, that I know why it's right.

5. And here I think is where both programs have to be judged. Rosetta helped me learn single words but I just didn't really know how to use them to make actual sentences. I could point, say a word, but not a whole lot more than that. With Fluenz I understood how Spanish worked, and so I was able to actually form sentences on my own.

6. Back to my middle ground. Fact is you do learn a ton of words with Rosetta, and that's good. And the fact is that you can really put them together with Fluenz.

165 of 166 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Fluenz delivers July 4, 2008

By Lloyd J. Goldstein PhD

Amazon Verified Purchase

Fluenz Spanish 1+2 Windows, Next-Generation Spanish Language Learning Software

I had high school Spanish more than 50 years ago, but never managed to say anything more complicated than "Where's the bathroom?". I've averaged one lesson per day for the past 19 days since receiving Fluenz and last night ordered, commented on and paid for an entire meal - in Spanish - at a Mexican restaurant.

Fluenz is a little different from other language programs I've read about: There is no formal vocabulary building, no verb conjugation or memorization, no rote anything. Typically, one lesson will concentrate on one scenario: shopping, airports, restaurants, etc. Real world situations. Dialogue will be exchanged between two participants, then your personal tutor, Sonia, will dissect everything. Following Sonia's explanations will be exercises wherein you type responses, match columns of phrases and sentences, and record dialogue (as a conversational participant) into your microphone. It's pretty much effortless if you're willing to put in the time.

Sonia is perfect for the job of tutor; she is personable, accent-free in English and is a native speaker of Spanish.

The screen organization is tasteful and focused; the "beat" music, which I find distracting, can be toggled off.

There is one mis-cue: Some of the columns of Spanish sentences do not match completely their English equivalents. I first regarded this as a minor flaw, but eventually became annoyed that these mistakes had not been caught before finalyzing the program.

Although a microphone is recommended, its use is of marginal importance and whether or not you have one shouldn't be a deciding consideration for or against this program.

If there is one caveat here, it's the importance of being able to touch type accurately and speedily. Although you can toggle off the requirements for correct Spanish punctuation marks, the program does not allow spelling errors. I'm a reasonably fast typist and am typically able to complete a session in something like an hour and a half. I can easily picture a slower typist requiring two and a half hours to do the same work.

Further notes: The spoken portion of the sessions becomes more and more rapid-fire, just as it is spoken by native speakers. I have a substantial hearing loss, and though I am certain that more acute hearing would make it easier to comprehend, even students with normal hearing will find it a challenge to understand some of what some of the conversationalists say (I have my favorite speakers and also those I wish weren't in the dialogues. That, though, is what the real world offers, also.) I do use a high quality set of earphones for the lessons, and with them I am able to comprehend everything, even if it means sometimes having to have a sentence repeated. This is itself a handy program feature.

An on-screen resource, WORDS, provides a nominal sampling of Spanish-English translations keyed to the current lesson. I purchased a good Spanish-English dictionary to supplement it because the program version has so few words and because it does not contain clues to accenting syllables. A good number of written dictionaries have no accent guides, either, so be careful with your selection. Also, if you buy a dictionary be certain both the accenting and the translations themselves are appropriate for the country/region you are interested in.

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November 25, 2008
P.S.: Several months have passed since I wrote this review. I took a weeklong trip to South America after working about halfway through the second disk. Thanks to Fluenz I was able to make myself understood in every situation including airports, taxis, shopping and an extended stay at an estancia in Argentina. Unhappily, because of my hearing disability, I was rarely able to understand what was spoken TO me. This in no way reflects badly on Fluenz. I was repeatedly complimented (by my hosts and a party of guests from Costa Rica) on my vocabulary. If there is any final comment here it is that carefully listening to a lesson on good earphones is not the same as dealing with real people in a noisy world.

110 of 113 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars At last, a wonderful program to learn Spanish December 16, 2007

By Maria Pardo

I'm a native speaker of Spanish but have reviewed this program for several co-workers at a multilateral institution in Washington D.C. Fluenz Spanish 1+2 is a multimedia application that comes in two DVD-ROMs. The material is organized in sessions that are led by a charismatic tutor on full motion video. She does a very good job of explaining the intricacies of Spanish vocabulary, grammar and usage from the point of view of an English-speaker, and in plain English. Each session begins with the tutor's brief introduction, followed by a conversation that contains the material to be worked on, followed by her longer tutorial. These video tutorials present the most effective summaries of how Spanish works I've ever heard. Following the tutorial the program goes on to a series of 13 different kinds of fully interactive workouts. These grow increasingly challenging, and force the user to review the material by writing it, reading it, listening to it, and recording it. These workouts have been beautifully designed with beautiful photographs of Latin America and Spain. Whereas other language learning methods seek to teach languages without any assistance from English, Fluenz's refreshing approach makes for faster learning suited to adults. The systematic comparisons between English and Spanish grammar allow learners to understand structures immediately, and to grasp how key verbs can be easily used in a variety of situations. All the vocabulary taught by the program is relevant, since it has been designed with a traveling adult in mind. Although some might miss learning the Spanish words for tree or for apple, this is more than made up for by the ability to speak to a taxi cab driver, to activate a cell phone, or to figure out if there is hot water at a beach hotel, etc. While the vocabulary is very specific, the program makes a lot of emphasis on the core grammar anyone would have to learn to pursue advanced learning. All in all, I highly recommend Fluenz Spanish 1+2. I believe it will lead to fast, common-sense learning of relevant materials because it has been developed from the point of view of teens and adults traveling to Spanish-speaking countries or wanting to establish a strong foundation for further learning.