Kelly and I are taking a vacation to the US soon, leaving a friend as a housesitter with our dogs and cats here in our home near Lake Chapala, outside of Guadalajara, Mexico. I’m looking forward to seeing what it’s like to speak English with everyone! Yes, I used to do that when I lived there, but I’ve been in Mexico most of the time for several years now.
Actually, last fall in California, I found chances to speak Spanish: here’s a story I tell about chatting in Spanish in a department store in San Francisco — the story is down the page a ways. So I expect I will speak some Spanish this time too.
Thanks to the software I use for this blog (Wordpress), I’ve got articles written that will appear on this site through our September return.
I am cutting back to every two weeks, though, instead of weekly. For those of you who get weekly emails telling you what’s new in the blog, I *think* those will automatically not go out if there is nothing new. We’ll see; I will tweak it later if necessary. (If you don’t get those emails and would like to, just sign up for my ebook on how to learn Spanish, and you’ll get an email where you have to approve of it being sent to you, and then you’ll not only be on the list, you will also have the ebook!)
Someone emailed me this morning asking me to write more about my experiences in Mexico. I’m not sure if he knew that I have a huge website, over 500 pages, at Mexico-with-heart.com — so if you are interested in that topic, take a look! I just overhauled the site and there is a lot there.
If you're new here, you may want to get yourself a copy of my free ebook Five Keys to Learning Spanish Rapidly -- there's a form on the right side of this page. Thanks for visiting! -- Rosana Hart
Rocket Spanish is one of the most popular of the Spanish language programs that I review on this site. (If you haven’t seen it, here’s my comparison chart for it, Pimsleur Spanish, Rosetta Stone Spanish, Fluenz Spanish, and Tell Me More Spanish.)
Anyway, I thought it might be helpful to spell out what the two different ways are that you can get Rocket Spanish.
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Rocket Spanish
I read someone’s opinion someplace online that the website Livemocha was like Rosetta Stone, only better. So I decided to check out Livemocha, specially since it has a large free part.
Now Rosetta Stone doesn’t suit my learning style, plus theoretically I think it’s not the best approach to learning languages… here’s my Rosetta Stone review. So with a bias against the program, off I went to poke around Livemocha.
It was evident right away that this was far more than just a bunch of lessons. It’s a very social, interactive place. I believe that there are quite a few of these interactive language places around the net, but this is the only one I have tried so far.
I went to Livemocha just before I got a nice new desktop computer with great sound capabilities, and unfortunately my old laptop wasn’t up to all the multimedia aspects of Livemocha. Its sound card didn’t work well enough for me to use the pronunciation feature, but still I did do one of the lessons. It was rather like Rosetta Stone, in using images and words. So if you are considering Rosetta Stone, you might try this first.
Here is what Livemocha says you can do there:
- Enroll in Courses: With our fun and holistic online language courses you’ll develop all the skills and confidence to begin conversing with native speakers.
- Make Friends: The Livemocha community is full of friendly, like-minded, and motivated language learners looking to practice their skills. Don’t be shy - introduce yourself and start practicing!
- Receive Tips from Native Speakers: Have your speaking and writing submissions reviewed and scored by native speakers. They will rate their proficiency, give you tips for improvement, and help you meet your language-learning goals.
- Stay Motivated: Learning a new language is tough! Track your weekly goals, earn points for completing exercises, and compare your progress with that of your friends for some friendly competition.
If an online language-learning community, for Spanish and many other languages, sounds like fun, take a look at Livemocha.
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livemocha
Pimsleur Spanish has a lot of fans as a method for learning Spanish, but like everything in this world, it has its pros and cons. Here I summarize the views of a variety of people who have actually used this program. My resources for this article include two good friends of mine who used it all the way through the 90 lessons, along with what I read all over the internet.
Five Good Things about Pimsleur Spanish
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Pimsleur Spanish
Recently my main work online has been a massive makeover of Mexico-with-Heart.com, which began about five years ago and now has something like 600 pages. Both the main website and the blog have hundreds of pages. It’s been annoying me for quite a while now so I finally began combining everything into one site. Everything will be much easier to find, for sure. For any of you who are into such things, the entire site will now be run on Wordpress. That link to the homepage shows the original site — for another week or two, anyway — and here is a link to the new site:
http://www.mexico-with-heart.com/category/learn-spanish/
That link will take you to a list of the various articles I’ve written on that site about learning Spanish. Here’s one tidbit from there: One night, Kelly and I had dinner in Colorado with our friends Bill and Chinle, who are rock climbers.
Chinle told the story of climbing in Mexico a few years ago. Chinle speaks very little Spanish. They were climbing there when she noticed some Mexican boys climbing in an area where they should have had ropes on.
So she called out to them, “No ropa! No ropa!”
In Spanish, ropa does not mean rope, as she thought. It means clothing. The mother of one of the boys thought this was hilarious, and laughed and laughed.
I’m always advocating that you listen to as much Spanish as possible… It’s one of the five keys in my free ebook on learning Spanish. (Don’t have the ebook yet? Get it from the order form on the right side of any page of this site.) So I’m happy today to direct your attention to an award-winning website from Spain where you can listen and listen. [click to continue…]
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spanish podcasts
Pimsleur Spanish is one of the most highly regarded programs for independent learners of Spanish. It is pricey, but you can really learn a lot of useful Spanish conversation from it, and as I’ve mentioned before, it is really good for pronunciation.
It consists of three series of 30 lessons each : Spanish I, Spanish II, and Spanish III. Full retail price for all that would be over a thousand bucks. Sure, that’s hefty, but it’s less than flying to a language school someplace and taking lessons. And you can resell the CDs after you study them. There will be more money-saving tips below.
What’s So Great About Pimsleur Spanish?
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Pimsleur Spanish
Well, I exaggerate, but if you have been exploring Spanish language lessons online, you may have noticed the glowing phrases about how much you can learn in just a short time.
Do I believe you can learn Spanish in a short time? Well, partly. Here’s what I do believe: [click to continue…]
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learn spanish fast
If you are looking online for basic Spanish lessons that you can listen to in your car or while doing other things, chances are you will come across Pimsleur Spanish and Rocket Spanish.
Which one would be best for you? It depends on what you need at this time. In a nutshell, I think Rocket Spanish is better just before a vacation trip where you will be speaking Spanish, and either is a good start for longer term Spanish learning. Rocket is way less expensive.
I’ll describe them both, but first I would like to set the stage by saying that I have listened to many of the basic Rocket Spanish lessons and some of the Pimsleur ones. I have also had long conversations with two of my friends who used Pimsleur. I actually like both programs a lot, but see different uses for them.
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Pimsleur Spanish,
Rocket Spanish
Fluenz Spanish 1 consists of 30 lessons designed to give you a strong grounding in basic Spanish. Today I will give you an overview of what is covered in the second half of the course. To read earlier blog articles in this series, just click on Fluenz Spanish under Categories in the sidebar.
These lessons continue to be set in locations a traveler would be likely to be in: hotels, taxis, city streets, shopping malls, restaurants. As before, each lesson has an introduction, a dialogue, an explanation, and a series of exercises to help you really remember the words and the ways they are put together. [click to continue…]
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Fluenz Spanish
