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 Great software for the price BUT! Jun 28, 2009
It has everything you need if you are well into spanish. I am about 2 months into spanish with 2 other programs. I am not disapointed with this product. except the beginner is at least INTERMIDIATE. I can't wait till I am far enough along to really use all this program. What a beginner can use this software for is the part where you talk spanish to the program throgh a microphone and it grades your pronouciation. You don't need to know what you are saying, just how well you are saying it. Besides it is my suggestion if you really want to learn spanish--to speak it. You need more than one program. Several modules included in this software are worth the money that it costs at Amazon. if you don't believe it. check the price of other good programs out. Its just that this one does not start at ground zero, but in a few months you will be glad it does not. Hopes this helps. We have spanish speakers in the family and the agree with these starements. phoenix Az
2 of 4 found the following review helpful:
 Thoroughly unsatisfied Jan 06, 2009
First off, this is the first language software that I've purchased, so I have nothing to compare it to. That said, given how highly this one is rated, I doubt I'll ever purchase language software of this type again.
The software itself is some of the worst I've used. It looks nice, but the pretty icons don't make up for the utterly confusing interface. It's impossible to tell what a button will do without hovering over it with the mouse to get a tool-tip; the tabbing through the exercise forms is hard to follow, slow, and confusing; options I would expect are unavailable for no clear reason. Also, for some reason, it isn't possible to type the non-english characters (á, í, etc.); instead, there are a series of buttons at the bottom of the screen that you have to click for each of these letters. Needless to say this is very slow and incredibly annoying.
As for the learning program itself, another review had it right: this is nothing but a bunch of exercises. It does little to actually help you learn the language, other than brute force repetition of the exercises. The activities will ask you to line up associated words, conjugate verbs, make nouns plural, etc., without any introduction, help, or translation. There is a help button for each item, but unless you already know some spanish, you have to click for each and every word to get a translation, memorize it, and then do the activity - this is exactly what these programs are supposed to avoid (I thought). The verbal recognition exercises just read off phrases displayed on the screen; there is no test for comprehension, and no translation to tell you what is being said.
I didn't find the audio CDs to be any better, taking eight disks to cover what I already learned in a few hours listening to a spanish podcast (which is free), and in a much less interesting way. I may get some use out of the practice dialog tracks, but that's not much value out of the whole package.
This program might be useful to some who need a refresher from their high school classes, but for learning spanish this is horrid. I'd highly recommend starting with one of the spanish podcasts that are available for free online - I've been listening to Coffee Break Spanish, and have learned more from those, and much more easily, that this would provide. Don't waste your money.
0 of 1 found the following review helpful:
Not too bad....certainly not perfect Nov 07, 2008
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.
1 of 2 found the following review helpful:
Instant Immersion Spanish Platinum Oct 05, 2008
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.
22 of 23 found the following review helpful:
Worthwhile, especially if you find it a bargain price May 25, 2008
Since I bought this for considerably less than $129, I am quite happy with this product, although 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.
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