Rocket Spanish Reviewed - Is This Program a Good Way to Learn Spanish?

What is Rocket Spanish all about? Is it a good way to learn Spanish or not? And why?

Rocket Spanish is a Spanish-language learning course produced by the Rocket Languages Group and available in digital media. The learning course is downloadable in mp3 format and the sales pitch says that it is the easiest way to learn Spanish. 

Of course every vendor says that his program is the easiest, fastest and best!  This review will focus on whether Rocket Spanish is all that it is cracked up to be or is it something less.

Using interactive speaking techniques, Rocket Spanish teaches by listening to and practicing dialog. The learner uses the new language to deal with familiar thoughts, situations and conversations, gradually expanding his understanding and ability to communicate. Through this method the student learns another language in a manner not too different from the way he learned his first language.

This method, pioneered and popularized by Michel Thomas, Paul Pimsleur and others, has become very popular in recent years. There is a great deal of evidence that this method is one of the best and most effective ways to learn any language. 

The course can be downloaded in MP3 format. This gives the learner/student the flexibility to listen to it either on his or her computer or to download it to an iPod or other MP3 player or burn a CD and hear it on any CD player.  This gives the learner full control, the ability to choose where and how to listen to the course materials.

A unique feature of the course is the way it uses online interaction to teach. For example, in one lesson you are shown an object and then given three options to pick the Spanish name for the object.

This is critical to help you learn to go from the object directly to the name for it in Spanish in your mind. To avoid hesitancy in your speach, you really need to go directly from the thought to the word in Spanish.

The natural beginners' tendency is to do it the wrong way.  The wrong way would be to go from object ->thought->English word->(translate)->Spanish word.

You will need to get past translating, to think in Spanish and go directly from the object to the name of that object in Spanish. This lets you begin to think in the language, a necessity to develop fluency.  Rocket Spanish appears to understand and anticipate that need.  It seems to be very good at helping you learn to go directly from thought to word in Spanish.

The course consists of 31 interactive lessons, which you can go through at your own speed.  Fast would be 2-3 weeks, normal is about 3 months.

Successfully finishing the course would put you at an early intermediate level of conversational ability.  You should be able to easily carry on everday social and commercial conversations with native speakers of Spanish.

Another fairly unique aspect of Rocket Spanish is its emphasis on good pronunciation.  One of their selling points is that you will learn to speak Spanish like a native.  This is not University-level proper "Castellano", as the pure form of the language is called, but everyday conversational-use Spanish.  You will be able to understand and make yourself understood when talking to ordinary people.

[In Spanish, as in English (only more so) you can generally recognize where a person is from by his accent.  University trained people have less of a distinct regional or national accent, but, nevertheless, it's easy to tell where they are from. 

I ran an informal experiment using recordings of parts of the Rocket Spanish course and playing them back to four different, educated native Spanish-speaking friends, each from a different country (in this case, Nicaragua, Mexico, Cuba and Costa Rica).  None of my friends could place the accent of the Rocket-Spanish teachers!  They all said it was excellent Spanish but could not pin down the nationality of the speaker!]

The only limitation to the Rocket Spanish learning course is that it does not impart a thorough grounding in grammar, verb conjugation and vocabulary.  But it does provide an excellent beginning framework within which to expand and add to these skills later, if you choose.

In summary, Rocket Spanish appears to be an exceptionally good overall conversational course.  It gives you a sound foundation in pronunciation and conversational basics. It puts you well beyond "advanced travelers' Spanish" into intermediate level conversational ability in the language.

Rocket Spanish seems to be all that its sales copy says that it is. It may well be the very best available anywhere.  While I do not have detailed knowledge of all of the programs out there, so far, of the dozen or so that I have checked out, Rocket Spanish is by far the best.  I strongly recommend it to any English-speaker who wants to learn to speak conversational Spanish.