paid spanish lessons

i found a few and researched reviews that compared the following:

rosetta stone of course
pimsleur
transparent language

RS and TL are supposed to be pretty similar as both use images and audio with flash cards. TL is much much cheaper. Pimsleur is pretty much a listen and repeat only. but, they have comprehensive packages with books that are fairly costly.

i myself have a copy of RS version 2, which is old, of Spanish Latin American. i have a copy of Spanish (Spain/Castillian) version 3.

i will purchase TL i think but am deciding on either downloading (plus u can put on mp3) or cds that are windows and mac compatible.

spanish learning update

alright, so, i've been listening to spanish radio and tv. i suppose this might be against Krashen's comprensible input because i don't know 99% of what's being said. but, Chomsky's LAD (which i haven't read yet) suggests that exposure is a key factor in picking up lang. so, i'm listening to spanish radio when i can b/c i want to get a feel for the language, pronunciations, phonetics and all.

in the meanwhile, i've found a couple of free sites that are useful to learning conversational spanish. first is BBC Languages (yes, british broadcasting corp). i like the site a lot. design-wise, say in "Spanish Steps," you start with basic words and phrases (such as in travel) of a variety of categories. pick "taxi" and in the center of the window, there's a yellow card where words and phrases will appear. to the right, there are icons/pics that indicate Spanish words, English words or just audio. click on these and the corresponding choices will present themselves. either case, you hear the spanish audio. these lessons are brief and at the end of each small lesson, there's a summary plus there are options to replay the summary and take a quiz. the quiz is comprised of a film strip with pics. to the right of it are empty boxes. to the right of these boxes are words and phrases which you can pick and drag and drop into the empty boxes that are next to the appropriate pictures. essentially, you are matching pics and words/phrases together. this is done with flash.

the other site is the Foreign Services Institute's language lessons. pick a language and the site will take you to a table of contents of lessons. click a unit number and media player with only audio plays. listen and repeat. this one is tough because the phrases get longer and faster.

rosetta stone spanish latin america

following up from yesterday's blog. really like the various stages. liking the voice recording and playback function as well as the typing function of the program. you'll be shown a picture and you have to write the object or the action and/or both.

i also like the progression of the lessons with simple to more complex vocab and syntax.

Learning Spanish (Latin American)

so, i don't know spanish (except for dinero). i started listening to spanish radio and i going through rosetta stone version 2 spanish (latin american). here are just a few notes:

Spanish (lat am) and spanish (spain)
both level 2

Rosetta Stone Button
exercises
click on level 1, unit column (8) and lesson columns with description in spanish (up to 11 - 12 lessons for each unit)

level 1, unit 1 - nouns and prepositions (sustantivos y preposiciones)
unit 2 - verbs - present tense (

in each unit lesson, there are 4 there are icons on the left of the screen, each representing the type of lesson. You start out with narration plus written cues plus pictures (picture shows speaker plus book). you can do an audio only exercise. the exercises right of the column of exercise types vary from 2 to 4 (in number). the first exercise box contains audio, visual and text cues with a text of an item, plus narration and pronunciation and 4 pics underneath. you must click on the picture the word at the top represents. the second exercise box has a pic at the top with 4 boxes below. the pic at top identifies an object and the boxes below just have the Spanish text. Pick the correct box/text after the narrator says the word (of the picture at the top). the third box has no pic at the top. there are 4 boxes with spanish words. the narrator says a word. pick the correct box. the 4th box - there's a spanish word or phrase at the top of the screen. the 4 boxes below are blank. the narrator says different words/phrases and each empty box highlights after the narrator says each word/phrase. here, i think the program is weak. this is just memorizing the boxes.

this by the way, is just for the first type of exercise (all the senses). the point is, each exercise leaves something out from the last exercise; thus, each exercise gets more challenging.

Talk Now button (bonus feature language system)
common words, phrase help with pics and narration

Foreign Language Acquisition & Technology

i'll be working on an independent course this summer on foreign language acquisition (second language) theories and technologies that can enhance learning foreign languages. in this blog, i'll touch base with what i'm doing and talk about software programs - online and off - that i'm poking around with.

Update

The Fall course 619 is coming to an end this week. I've updated the following:

1. Google site

2. Academic site, www.grammarwand.com. I have most of the text content done for "parts of speech" and "teaching 9th grade english" sections. the other sections remain and auxiliary aids for each sections (graphics, lessons, etc.) are yet to be done. 

Wiki

The purpose of wikis is for multiple end-users to input, edit and collaborate on a semi-bulletin like technology, which is the wiki itself. A wiki's primary mechanism is called a space, which is like a room in a house where you can lock the door and let certain people in. In that room or space is where notes, updates, etc. are communicated.