I have a 9th grader who is VERY interested in learning Spanish. We purchased Visual Link Spanish a few years ago. He "plays" with it every now and then but it doesn't see complete. I would really like to find something that would actually teach him to speak this language. He will be going to Mexico on a mission trip in August and that has made his interest peak even more. I've heard Rosetta Stone is good, but it's too expensive for us right now. Any suggestions?? Thanks Angela
We're going to do El Espanol Facil this year. http://www.theeasyspanish.com/ It looks really good, but I haven't actually bought it yet (hopefully it will be in the budget this month!), so I can't give a thumbs up or down yet.
You can also try Byki (http://www.byki.com/). It's free (at least for the first level) and comes in several languages.
We have Instant Immersion ASL and like that pretty well, they should have Spanish too, we also have Spanish Now from Transparent Language and have learned from it some. I do have to say that Rosetta Stone is Garrett's favorite Spanish though.
My daughter learned German through Power Glide. She loved it. Power Glide is a high school course. You can take one or two years of foreigh language. It comes with a CD and a workbook.
DS is doing Fluenz Spanish. He's only 10, and the program is made for adults, but he's doing great! It's very expensive, like $300 for the first two CDs but I got it as a gift. It teaches conversational Spanish from the get-go, as well as reading and writing it, all at the same time. They say it's better than Rosetta Stone, and it really seems amazing. PS, I speak, read and write Spanish, but unfortunately, I never taught DS. I regret it now, so I got Fluenz and I'm really happy with it.
I've heard lots of good things about livemocha.com It's online and free. We're using Rosetta Stone for French right now, and as someone with a French background I think it's a really well put together program. I agree that it is ridiculously expensive, though. Of all our curriculum I was willing to spend more for a really excellent French program, because I expect all my kids to be fully bilingual by the time they graduate high school.
I have used spanishdict.com and discoverspanish.com 's free podcasts. Both are geared towards adults but I haven't ran into anything inappropriate although I wouldn't let my children use the chat function or anything like that just because. They are not immersion but they are pretty good and the price is great. Free.
I will add just in case you are tempted by the highly marketed Rosetta Stone that if your child is taking a trip to Mexico he will not learn conversational Spanish right away unless he wants to say "the cat and the car" or other almost worthless phrases. They don't cover "Hello", "How are you?", "My name is" etc. until who knows when if at all. Of course, maybe if you are going for long term perhaps they do. We do have it but I use it as a supplement. I'm only about halfway through Level one because it was so tedious I moved to other stuff. Since I can't sell it I will probably use it as a supplement from now on and do multiple lessons at once to reinforce the things I've learned from other sites. It may sound silly but getting children's books or even better children's books with the an audio reading on cd from the library is a great way to supplement your whichever lessons you decide to do. Once you are more advanced you can switch to watching movies in Spanish.
That's why Fluenz is so nice! Within the first two lessons, DS learned how to say hi, how are you? I'm fine, how is she? She is fine etc etc etc. And then he learned how to order a glass of water, and a coffee for himself and for other people at his table, and then ask for the bill! They do it in a way that you learn to speak it, read it and write it all at the same time. And also how to think in Spanish. Its not just memorizing a few phrases, its way more than that!
