Rocket Spanish Review
Rating: 4 stars
Rocket Spanish is an online Spanish language-learning course for the complete beginner. The objective of the program is to teach you all you need to know to become a functional beginning Spanish speaker – someone who can communicate independently on a basic level. The program includes access to course materials, a motivation center, and forum.
Click Here to visit the Rocket Spanish website.
The course materials section is divided into two stages and eight lessons. Each one includes audio lessons that you can play through the site or download as an Mp3, multiple-choice comprehension quizzes, and language and culture sections. You can also add notes to yourself within the course and download an ebook that has all the written course material in one place.
The culture sections highlight different cultural topics from Spanish-speaking countries such as the importance of the Virgin of Guadalupe in Mexico or different currencies in use in Latin America. The language section focuses on aspects of specific grammar points or usage.
After each stage (a group of lessons) you can take a 100-question quiz. With a score of 80% or better you earn a certificate that is e-mailed to you.
The Rocket Spanish motivation center has a series of articles on topics like building your confidence in Spanish, designing your own Spanish-learning plan, memory tricks, and learning to enjoy the language, while the forum allows you to interact with others who are taking the same course.
What It Does Surprisingly Well
I think the motivation center is a nice innovation for a language product. In my experience lack of motivation is a much bigger factor in failing to learn a language than the quality of the materials, as without the right motivation to stick with learning a language, the learning just won’t happen. I think trying to address that problem through the course is rather a smart idea on their part.
The course assumes that you have no previous knowledge of Spanish, which is perfect for a complete beginner, as the course really breaks things down into bite-size chunks. The material starts out slow and easy and gets increasingly more complex.
What Might Turn You Off
If you have studied Spanish before, the course may possibly begin on too basic a level to hold your interest (unless the motivation center motivates you back, that is), but that is really a problem for all start-from-zero beginner courses, rather than the Rocket Spanish course specifically. On the other hand, if you have studied a little Spanish before, you could simply skip a couple of the lessons to get to where you need to be.
In the End
The Rocket Spanish program does well in addressing the needs of the beginning Spanish student and provides a variety of learning materials that complements each other. It is a good solid program for starting your journey to learn how to speak Spanish.