Rosetta Stone created a program, Rosetta Stone Spanish, that is designed to teach beginning to advanced levels of Spanish in order to make you fluent in the language.  Rosetta Stone Spanish is very different to many of the programs that were reviewed in the area of interaction.  Most of the lessons aren’t interactive at all; you just read a lesson that resembles that of a Spanish textbook.  The only interactivity is in the dictation exercises that require that the words you hear be written.  The lessons are pretty comprehensive for beginning lessons, but the activities are inadequate when it comes to practicing and evaluating your progress.

Features: Poor

The Rosetta Stone Spanish learning program provides an extremely simple tracking tool that keeps track correct answers that are given during the dictation exercise, but not for any of the lessons.  There are additional resources that are available on the website offered by Braser Soft.

Fundamentals: Poor

This program is mainly based on audio grammar lesson, but vocabulary is taught as you go through the program.  The program provides sound bites of Spanish words spoken by Spanish speakers that help with pronunciation and comprehension.  One drawback is there is not way to evaluate any improvement in pronunciation since there is no built in speech recognition system.

Ease of Use: Fair

The program is pretty simple to use, mostly because there aren’t many features to contend with.  Some of the buttons that are included aren’t clearly labeled making some trial and error necessary to figure the system out.

Teaching Tools: Fair

The program relies on a very basic textbook like interface that requires that the lessons are read.  While there is an application for testing your listening comprehension and typing the words that are heard, there is nothing in place that allows for pronunciation evaluation.  There is no video, no images, not much of anything.

Word Tools: Poor

While the Rosetta Stone Spanish learning program provides some adequate references for common Spanish words, there is nothing that is extensive enough to aid with fluency.

Help/Support: Poor

Rosetta Stone provides a simple tutorial to show how the program works. You can contact them via email, if you experience technical difficulties.

Summary:

We found that the Rosetta Stone Spanish program is nothing more than a Spanish textbook that has been put into a software program.  It is also very expensive.  If you want a program that offers an intuitive learning environment, check out the top product.

A complete side-by-side comparisons chart with our other ranked and reviewed products as well as a full list of product overviews is availble on the Spanish Software Reviews page.

Read the reivew for our Top Ranked Product here.