Product Description

Foreign language learning with Rosetta Stone Spanish (Latin America) Levels 1, 2&3 you connect with the world around you. With level one you begin learning fundamental vocabulary and essential language structure, from greetings and introductions to simple questions and their answers. Gain the confidence and enter the intermediate level where you will be able to talk about your environment; give and get directions, tell time, dine out with self-reliance, shop and enjoy basic social interactions. Taking what you’ve learned in Levels 1 and 2, we help you reach an advanced level of competence. This competence allows you to connect with the world around you. You will learn to share your ideas and opinions, express your feelings and talk about everyday life; your work, current events and much more. Now Rosetta Stone with Audio Companion allows the learner to take Rosetta Stone anywhere: in the car, the gym or on-the-go! What is Audio Companion? Audio Companion CDs are activities that correspond to the Rosetta Stone CD-ROM software lessons. The learner can listen to Audio Companion and practice what they’ve been learning on the computer, turning travel time into productive language learning time. Audio Companion lets the student access the power of Rosetta Stone lessons whenever and wherever they want, they can play the CD’s on a stereo, or download them to a MP3 player. It empowers the student and helps reinforce the lessons in any busy lifestyle!

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #43 in Software
• Brand: Rosetta Stone
• Model: 20988
• Released on: 2008-06-16
• Platforms: Windows Vista, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Mac OS X
• Format: CD-ROM
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: 8.01" h x 4.00" w x 8.01" l, 3.00 pounds

Features

• Rosetta Stone teaches you a new language naturally, by getting you to think, live and breathe the language
• Innovative solutions get you speaking new words, right from the start
• Rosetta Stone moves forward only when you're ready--you drive the pace, you set the schedule
• With Rosetta Stone, you'll discover a foundation of key vocabulary that you'll use to build into a whole new language
• Audio Companion lets you take the Rosetta Stone experience anywhere: in the car, at the gym, or on-the-go

Amazon.com
Rosetta Stone Personal Edition contains everything you need to give the voice inside of you a new language. The method used recreates the natural way you learned your first language, revealing skills that you already have. This approach has won numerous awards, and has been adopted by countless organizations, schools and millions of users around the world. Join the language revolution today. Only with Rosetta Stone.

The comprehensive language-learning solution that fits your life.

Learn Naturally
Learn your next language the same way you learned your first language. Dynamic Immersion empowers you to see, hear and comprehend without translating or memorizing. You already have this ability. Rosetta Stone simply unlocks it.

Engage Interactively
Get feedback to move forward. You learn best by doing, and you'll apply what you've learned to get to the next step. Rosetta Stone adapts to your individual needs and skills, because you drive the program with your progress.

Speak Confidently
Start speaking immediately. From the very first lesson, you'll speak. You'll begin with essential basics, which form the building blocks of the language. Soon you'll create new sentences on your own, using words you've learned.

Have Fun
Best of all, Rosetta Stone is addictive. With every entertaining activity, you'll feel success. You'll want to use Rosetta Stone to have that next moment, that next breakthrough. So you'll keep using it, and you'll learn more!

That's language-learning success.
That's Rosetta Stone.

No translation or memorization required.

The most effective way to learn a new language is to be surrounded by it. When you were an infant, your parents taught you this way, by intuitively associating words with images. That's the ultimate language lab, but most language-learning programs completely ignore this.

Think about all of the ways you've tried to learn a language: classes at school, tapes and cassettes, even software that uses your native language as a base for your next one. What do they all have in common? Translation and memorization.

Instead of taking a "direct flight" from your brain to your new language, translation and memorization connects you to your old language. You always have to "fly" from your brain, to your native tongue ... and then translate what you've memorized to communicate.

That might work for a few words, but what happens when you get to a sentence or phrase? When you have to change tenses? You're going to make a lot of "connecting flights." That's why those other methods are so frustrating ... and why they fail.

Enter Dynamic Immersion.
This method encourages you to think like a baby. You'll pair words with vivid, real-life images and make connections between things you know and the new language. Soon, you'll be thinking in a new language, stringing words together into phrases that you create.

Innovative technology.
Rosetta Stone places this Dynamic Immersion method at the core of a suite of software that works with you to develop your skills. The simple, intuitive interface helps to keep you engaged in the solution, while advanced speech recognition technology makes certain that you're speaking correctly and accurately. Best of all, Rosetta Stone never leaves you behind. You'll only move forward when you're ready, when you've become comfortable and confident.

Communicate and connect with the world: Level 1, 2 & 3 Set.
Rosetta Stone Level 1, 2 & 3 Set will take you on a journey from the basics to a whole new level of sophistication. You'll build a foundation of fundamental vocabulary and essential language structure. You'll quickly gain the confidence to engage in social interactions. Say "hello" and "goodbye," arrange travel, order food, go shopping and more! From there, you'll share your ideas and opinions, express feelings and talk about your life, your interests and more. You'll discover a voice. In a new language.

Audio Companion
With Audio Companion, you'll enhance the Rosetta Stone experience wherever you go. You'll learn new skills on the computer, and then reinforce what you've learned with Audio Companion. Simply play the CDs on a stereo or download them to a MP3 Player. Each Audio Companion activity corresponds to a lesson in the Rosetta Stone software, so you can turn your travel time into productive language-learning time.

Inside the box, you'll find:

• Version 3 Personal Edition CD-ROM software for Levels 1, 2 & 3 (Windows/Mac)
• Headset microphone
• User's guide
• Audio Companion, a multiple-CD set to play or download to your MP3 player

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Customer Reviews

They suckered the US Army into buying this?
As a member of the US Army, I have access to all of the language learning software offered by Rosetta Stone at no cost to me. I feel obligated to share my opinion with the rest of the public before they invest $500 into this product.

There is absolutely no way you can learn a foreign language by solely using this software. There is nothing included that breaks down the rules of the language being studied. Nothing on conjugation, exceptions, gender, colloquial expressions, idioms etc. I guess they thought the fundamentals were optional. There are just pictures associated with sentences which the user has to match; nothing more.

I already speak fluent German, having taken 2 years of it in college, serving to tours in Germany, and having had non English-speaking German girlfriends. I was recently reassigned to Italy, causing me to dig out the resources to learn another language. My frustration with Rosetta Stone left me feeling compelled to share my thoughts. For $500 this should be a complete comprehensive program, which it is not.

I feel that the people who sing the praise of this software are those who have never learned another language. The program does a good job of giving you a sense of accomplishment when in reality it still leaves you lacking the skills necessary to venture out on your own. It will leave the gullible and ignorant feeling like they are getting their money's worth. I challenge anyone to find one person who went from zero to fluency exclusively using this program.

If one could say that there were 10 levels of learning before achieving fluency, then this product would be good at taking you through level 3 to 6.

Had this product been listed at $50 rather than ten times that amount, I wouldn't have felt the need to warn the buyer. I feel that the $500 price tag has people thinking, "If it costs that much, it must be the best".

Buy this product only if you already have a good foundation of the language structure and are just looking to review pronunciation and sentence structure.

To the program's credit, It does give you valuable exposure to a language and I feel it would be a good supplement to a comprehensive learning program.

Not The Best Way to Learn!
I was very excited to get this product "Spanish (Latin America) Versions 1,2,3" with the Audio Companion.
The software is surprisingly unsophisticated, especially for the exorbitant cost. The verb tenses are not explained which is of course very important in Spanish. Yes, it's supposed to mimic how we all learned our first language, but the problem is, I'm obviously not 18 months old and really can't learn like that. Another problem is that within the lessons, there are no distracters. For instance: The user is presented with three phrases and three pictures and is required to match them up. One picture of a man, one of a woman and one of a boy all engaged in some kind of activity. The problem is that I can easily recognize the word 'hombre' for 'man,' so that's the obvious choice. Therefore I can choose the right answer without understanding anything about the phrase itself. There needs to be other similar phrases as a distraction so the user is forced to decipher the meaning without just picking the obvious choice.

WARNING: The "Audio Companion" is completely useless! It's just the soundtrack to the lessons (no translation). How am I to know what the speaker is saying without any point of reference!?

WARNING: DO NOT rely on this product exclusively to learn a language. You'll need to constantly refer to a translation website and (even better) a friend who's fluent in the language you're learning. Example: A picture of a child at the piano and the parents behind him. The phrase associated with it is, "Los padres están escuchando." "The parents are listening." But I had to get it translated because I didn't know if the verb meant watching, listening, teaching, etc. There has to be a way to reveal the translation within the program.

OK... I am learning, but that's because I'm using Rosetta Stone only as a baseline. I am also using homemade flashcards, books and dictionaries, translation websites, patient friends who are native Spanish speakers and other free services.

WARNING: R.S. has this product locked up so tight that it becomes detremental to its use. R.S. allows 2 'seats,' meaning it can only be installed on 2 computers. If a user uninstalls it with the intention to reinstall on another computer and does not first go through the 'deactivation process,' it's tremendously difficult to have it reinstalled anywhere else. The uninstall process does not warn users to deactivate first. I guarantee you will spend many days on the phone with tech support to straighten it out!

WARNING: R.S. tech support is not available on the weekends when I assume most people will be using the product.

Sorry Rosetta Stone... Not worth $500!!!

BEWARE of this Company's Policies
BEWARE! If you buy this product you can never resell it. Never return it. Never upgrade it. You better love it. Because you're stuck with it. I purchased version 2 a year ago and wanted to upgrade to 3 so I thought I'd sell my version 2. Rosetta Stone cancelled my eBay auction and threatened LEGAL action for attempting to resell an original legitimate in the box version of their product. They will only let you return it for 6 months and ONLY if you bought it directly from them (sorry Amazon) and there are NO upgrades. Basically, I'm out $500. Though I would never ever consider buying another Rosetta Stone product, where the customer is always wrong. BEWARE of this company.