Spring Break and Language Study

Mark and I have finished up our cycles at CEDEI and are heading to the coast for some much needed R&R. We have a couple of reservations made, but we may just go where the wind blows us. Remember spring break back in college when you just hopped on the bus and hoped you made it to your destination? Well, we've got a little of that adventuresome spirit in us as well!

I think working with students has put a little bit of that excitement back in us. The students were all talking about where they were going to spend Easter (spring) vacation and almost all of them were leaving for the "playa" and so we thought we'd join them!

With my Advanced English Conversation students, we celebrated our last day at the Coffee Tree and, of course, we continued our English conversation. I have to say these young people are the cream of the crop and I hope to keep in touch with them at least once a month.

I also had the opportunity to do a product review on a Spanish language program which I enjoyed immensely.  My full review will be up on their website, but in the meantime I wanted to let you know that I love this product better than anything I've used thus far.

Rocket Languages has it over Rosetta and any other program I've used because they teach you the way an adult learns languages with the "why" behind words, phrases, sentence structure and grammar, but in an interactive manner. I tried out their Premium, Premium Plus and Platinum programs and I'm sticking with it 20-30 minutes a day for the rest of my life.

If you're a Spanish beginner, it's perfect. If you're at the intermediate or advanced level, you can continue to increase your vocabulary and fluency in an interactive manner. The Rocket Recorder (voice recognition system) allows you to see how closely you come to matching your voice with the "teachers" (Mauricio and Amy). You can download the audio to your MP3 player or iPod and take it along with you. I downloaded the audios to my iTunes library, so I can take them with me on my morning walks.

Rocket Languages started in 2004 and has been the number one interactive audio language program since 2005 and now I can see why. I actually look forward to studying and with 600 pages worth of content in PDF format, you have the best of both worlds. With each lesson, there's also a cultural section which is very informative and adds to your overall learning experience.

The best part is the user friendliness of the program: you just log on to your account, click on the section you want, and away you go! I found that using an earpiece microphone worked best for me to get the most out of the interactive audio lessons, but it's not absolutely necessary. 

Overall, it's a much better value than any other program I've used thus far, so I give it five stars for price, user friendliness, content, voice recognition and tech support. And with a 60-day money back guarantee (no questions asked), there's nothing to lose.

Until next time...hasta luego!

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