Instant Immersion Spanish Platinum

Customer Rating:
Summary: Not too bad....certainly not perfect
Comment: I'm just now getting around to using this program and I'm finding that its organization is a little unusual. However, I think with time the familiarity with the program will better facilitate navigation. One other bad note that the program has is that within the "grammar" component of the program, example Spanish sentences are not translated for you. This makes it difficult for me to learn some of the material. I do see some merits with the program and you can't beat the price compared with Fluenz and Rossetta Stone.

Customer Rating:
Summary: Instant Immersion Spanish Platinum
Comment: For the money (this was on sale on Amazon for $25), an ubeatable value, with more than 750 hours of exercises. This is essentially the same Tell Me More software sold by Auralog for $200 and up. However, it is probably best used as an adjunct for learning pronunciation and vocabulary in conjunction with a traditional didactic course. Some may find the interface a bit confusing at first, but once this hurdle is crossed, a very good learning experience awaits.

Customer Rating:
Summary: Worthwhile, especially if you find it a bargain price
Comment: Since I bought this for considerably less than $129, I am quite happy with this product, Even if it's not perfect. I would have given it 5 stars but for a few things: the designers of the CD ROM software could have made it easier for beginners by not "hiding" function buttons, which suddenly appear when the cursor is put in their neighborhood. These icon buttons suddenly show up, and it took me quite awhile to discover that I could return to "home" without exiting the program and restarting it (the 'home' button is in the lower left, barely visible unless you put the cursor near it). Once you find and understand all these functions, however, it becomes much easier to use. Also, the program has had a tendency to occasionally crash (I'm using XP on a 64bit AMD processor, 80GB hard drive and 512MB SDRAM) and you'll have to start over. This seems to happen in certain parts of the program more than others, and so far has been only a minor annoyance. Another thing to realize is that each CD ROM has lots of lessons. By hiding the home button, I didn't realize for a time that having gotten through all the activities of the first lesson, there were still many other lessons left on that disc (seems obvious now, but....) And finally, there's quite a bit of spoken (and very funny) "cartoon" material hidden away in the "grammar explanation" section containing lots of spoken material (connoted by a smiley face icon next to the sections that contain this feature) that you might not even realize is there - so definitely explore every section of each lesson before deciding it's not of interest - you may be surprised at what's hidden away. In fact, now that I've spent a couple days using the first CD ROM, I realize there's really a lot of material to go through. In addition, you get 8 audio CDs which contain the basics of grammar, useful expressions etc, which are spoken by a bilingual woman at a much slower rate than the material on the CD ROMS. The CD ROMS use several native speakers who speak rapidly for the most part. This may be disconcerting at first, especially when you're trying to repeat what they've said, but the software allows you to isolate both sentences and words in a sentence, repeat them over and over, and also has a high tech speech evaluation program if you're computer is equipped with a microphone. This allows you to check your speech by a visible phonogram and computer evaluation. So overall, this is a sophisticated product. I think once you get past the nuts and bolts of finding out how to operate it, you'll be glad you bought it. If I were to make any recommendations about the method employed, I would say that adding substitution drills of the kind used in Foreign Service Institute courses (where a model sentence is introduced, followed by the student being given a prompt to change one aspect of it, such as "I met her at the bank" - "near the stadium - "I met her near the stadium" etc - would have made for a truly 5 star product. Substitution drills take the student beyond repetition and require more active involvement in juggling sentence components and aid in fluency, and also allow for old material to be constantly repeated in new contexts. Overall though, this course is quite impressive.

Customer Rating:
Summary: Unsatisfied
Comment: The description gives the impression that the CD-Rom started you from the basics. The truth is that the CD-Rom is nothing but exercises. You are to learn how to speak the language by listening to the audio CD's. I have decided to purchase Rosetta Stone. I hope this deters you from purchasing this product like I did.

Customer Rating:
Summary: Check the discs
Comment: Check your discs before starting. I was going through the 11 discs that came in the box to discover that I had two of the audio disc 6 and none of the software disc 2!