Rocket Languages is a course that promises to teach students to speak Spanish in less than eight weeks. They offer a really good software solution, but online their system is a bit lacking. Unfortunately, the presentation of its website and its learning components lack professionalism and the approach to teaching does not reflect current pedagogy.
There is one very interesting component of Rocket Languages, and that is that with the sixth component of their program, the student gets access to the Rocket Languages Learn Spanish Forum. In this forum, the students will find teachers, native speakers and Spanish enthusiasts that will answer all queries 24 hours a day. Unfortunately, this forum is not available for inspection. We hope the forum is as great as Rocket Languages claims it is.
One positive aspect that the course does offer though is the MegaVocab, MegaVerbs, and the MegaAudio software games that feature lots of pictures. They genuinely looked like they would be a lot of fun and would probably help anyone who is learning Spanish.
Rocket Languages is not currently offering articles or newsletters for their students. We hope that as the forum is used and populated that their library of cultural information will grow.
There is no attempt to develop stories even during the lessons. This is a serious problem when talking about language acquisition because students aren’t building their language knowledge naturally.
Although the forum does offer a chance for interaction, unfortunately this interaction isn’t audio. We look forward to Rocket Languages offering this as a component of their course.
In spite of the fact that Rocket Languages makes good use of audio, it doesn’t offer the students a chance to record their own voices, therefore not giving their students a chance to better their pronunciation.
del.icio.us
Digg
StumbleUpon
Yahoo! My Web
Facebook
Google Bookmarks
ma.gnolia
Newsvine
reddit
Windows Live
Ask & Answer