Take a look at one of the ads posted on the forums...

[ardvark71]

Hi all...

Here is one of the ads that appeared on the front page of the forums. Keep watching the video and after about 15-20 minutes, you will able to get the CD's for only, I repeat, only $9.95!!

Have fun!

[GreyGeek]

I saw that ad last year. I have the Rosetta Stone Spanish Language CD and extra disk. $600, IIRC. I got it for my daughter, who had just graduated from college and was applying for a job with the Social Security Admin. They wanted some folks with a little Spanish speaking ability. She got the job but never had to use the skill. She gave the box back to me last year. I started using it. It takes a LOT of time and gives a lot of review. Rosetta also included voice pattern recognition to compare what you say with what a native speaker says.

When I saw that ad I thought it would save a lot of time. I checked it out at Wikipedia, which gives some useful information, and at Amazon. Here is a review from Amazon:

This review is from: Latin American Spanish, Conversational: Learn to Speak and Understand Latin American Spanish with Pimsleur Language Programs (Simon & Schuster's) (English and Spanish Edition) (Audio CD)
I disagree with all the glowing reviews, and seriously doubt any of the reviewers started from square one and felt they were prepared to visit a Spanish-speaking country from it alone.

Pimsleur does have a great idea, inspired by the Foreign Service Institute's approach, but the thing is it takes TIME. What's good about the method is you're drilled and drilled and drilled... what you learn here will stay with you a long time.

The flipside (and it's a big one) is that with all that repetition, you learn almost nothing. You'll learn the numbers (up to a hundred), how to tell time, how to order a generic beer (almost every lesson spends considerable time on this), and how to ask where a hotel or restaurant is.

But if the hotel is not "right here" or "over there," (the only possible answers, apparently) you'll have no clue. Forget about "turn left at the intersection and continue for two-and-a-half blocks." You can order a beer, but forget about a salad, the daily special, what the waiter recommends, a steak, some chicken, or tea or a soft drink.

You can go shopping but unless you want to buy "things" you'll come back with nothing. Nada! "Cosas" [things] is the only thing covered! Forget shirts, dresses, pants, maps, guides, film, cameras, books, hats. Forget about buying a plane ticket, a train ticket, asking for help, asking what's playing, finding the beach, a nightclub, a doctor, a cop, or even checking into the hotel that was conveniently "over there."

To get any truly useful survival skills with this approach, these eight disks would need to be followed by at least a hundred others. And with three hundred disks practiced over two years, I have no doubt you'd even be able to converse on a variety of topics, which I believe was Pimsleur's intention. But Pimsleur's eight disks is so tragically short of qualifying for tourist survival Spanish, that it's comical, as long as you're not the one using it.

I didn't buy it.

[vw72]

I don't know anything about the CD, but the Pimsleur method is a well accepted method for learning a foreign language. Like most things though, different approaches work better for different people, so maybe that reviewer just needed a different method (there are several). I'm also pretty confident that a full Pimsleur method would cost more than $9.95, just like the sample Rosetta Stone programs aren't enough to actually teach the language, either. It does help one appreciate what immigrants, regardless of nationality, must go through to learn American English.

[rms]

All help is useful when learning a foreign language. However, I read somewhere that for some degree of proficiency in ordinary conversations in just about any language, it is necessary to learn approximately 3000-5000 words, which takes on average 4-6 months of everyday commitment. To say nothing of grammar. I find reading a novel or two particularly helpful in this respect.

[vw72]

Actually, a method that helps tremendously, once you have a basic grasp of a language is to take a movie you are very familiar with. Tell the DVD to play in, say Spanish, and then put on English subtitles. Of course, this usually only works if trying to learn Spanish of French. And, surprisingly, research shows that the movie Shrek has the highest percentage of working among people under the age of 16 (the study didn't test above that age).