Instant Immersion Spanish Levels 1,2 & 3 |  | From: Topics Entertainment
List Price: $49.99
Buy New: $30.99
as of 11/21/2009 22:16 CST details
You Save: $19.00 (38%)
New (23) Used (1) from $28.99
Seller: Universal Mania
Rating:  82 reviews
Sales Rank: 103
Format: CD-ROM
Platforms: Windows Vista, Mac OS X Intel, Windows XP
Media: CD-ROM
Autographed: No
Memorabilia: No
Batteries Included: No
Operating System: Mac OS X
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 7.6 x 5.5 x 2.2
MPN: 8041822
Model: 81018
UPC: 781735521168
EAN: 0781735521168
ASIN: B0026PEPDA
Release Date: June 16, 2009
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Features:
| • | A complete language learning system | | • | Great for travel, business or school | | • | For all levels and learning styles | | • | Fun and easy to use | | • | The quickest way to learn ¿ guaranteed |
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
Topics Instant Immersion Spanish Levels 1, 2 ,3 The Topics Instant Immersion Spanish Levels 1, 2 ,3 uses natural image association techniques to help you learn as easily as you learned your first language. Have more fun, save money and reach your goals faster — guaranteed! Whether you're learning a new language for school, work or your next vacation, Topics Instant Immersion Spanish Levels 1, 2 ,3's fun and effective exercises, interactive activities and challenging quizzes will help you achieve language fluency in less time than other language systems. You will think, read and speak your new language with ease. The complete system includes six language learning CD-ROMS and three bonus discs: an interactive DVD, audio for an iPod or MP3 player and the Who is Oscar Lake? game.
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 82
 It is really hard to like this software November 20, 2009
Jeffrey E (Austin, TX)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
This is tough software to like. The outside box looks great but you open it up and the disks are sort of taped to piece of cardboard inside. Seems kind of cheap to me, but hey - maybe the programs are good. Sorry, it was even weaker here. The software would have been pretty cool... in 1997 but in 2009 it nothing short of amateurish. Choppy graphics and clunky interfaces went out with Windows 98. I truly felt like I was being treated like a child by a piece of software.
OK - there are a bunch of words to hear & memorize, but it gets boring and tedious too quickly.
If you want to learn a second language, I would look elsewhere.
 Fairly painless introduction to Spanish November 20, 2009
Kevin Carlson (Everett, WA USA)
I was most impressed by the variety of visual elements in the onscreen exercises. Few students enjoy dull flash cards, and the developers of this training software understand that very well.
Included is a DVD that you can use with your TV/DVD player and remote for brushing up your vocabulary on short notice. Also exports audio to your iPod for practicing on the go!
A great value compared to other language learning systems out there. Check it out!
Great way to learn spanish November 19, 2009
Mynana (Paterson, Wa)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
This is allot of fun to learn to speak spanish so I was able to learn pretty fast Try this out and you will not be sorry
 Good for the price, but not my favorite. November 19, 2009
Rachel Himes (Indiana, Pennsylvania USA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I haven't had the opportunity to sample Rosetta Stone, but I have tried several other interactive language programs at various price levels. Among the moderately priced set, this on is probably the easiest to use and contains the most information. If you're looking for a starter set, I would recommend looking here first.
My 2 complaints are these:
This is a vocabulary builder. It does not teach sentence structuring and conjugation. It is by no means a thorough, self-instructional spanish program.
There is NO guidance whatsoever. In the concept of "immersion" you are thrown into the language like a baby with no guidance. Not great for progressive learning. This could be made better by giving the buyers a users guide or making this resource available at the website.
My 2 recommendations:
Lots of content. There are months worth of information to work with here at a great price.
Easy to use. My 4-year-old played some of the beginners vocabulary games and started to pick up the words. They were actually fun to play.
Great Resource At An Excellent Price November 19, 2009
Jonathan Nelson (Illinois)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
After graduating from college, I began work as an international field Engineer. After the collapse of the Asian economies, it was not long before I found myself in Central and South America. Suddenly, I was a 20-something American kid from the Midwest who spoke English and German in the middle of the Spanish-speaking world. As any resourceful youngster, I figured out how to get by through trial and error, the kindness of strangers, and the foresight of many foreign countries to teach their students a second language (English) starting at a young age. I had never invested much time or energy into any sort of program to learn Spanish and I was curious if a product such as this might have made a difference and enhanced my experience.
I loaded the software on a 2-year-old HP desktop that was running Windows Vista Home Edition and had 2GB of RAM. I had no problems loading the software. It was simply put the CD-ROM into the drive and the software would take care of the rest.
In the roughly 1 month I have been using this software, I had gotten into Level 2. With some more dedication, I'm sure I could have gotten a bit farther. In this time, I would review the CD-ROM roughly 30 minutes at a time, about 3 days a week.
I did not try the MP3/Ipod disk, the DVD game, or the Oscar Lake game, so I can not comment on them.
Level 1 Disk 1 was quite enjoyable. I would put the content roughly as complicated as watching Dora the Explorer. Most of the words were quite simple. The interface is easy to use at this point. What I did not learn from Dora, I knew much of it from my travels in Spanish speaking countries. The lessons consisted of a grouping of words by subject. First you would be read the words by a narrator in rapid fashion. Then if you have a microphone, you can read the words back when shown a picture to work on pronunciation (I did not have a microphone, so I can not comment on this). Then you have a multiple-choice game where you have to identify the object being asked for/about out of a group of 4. The narrator tells you what each of the 4 objects are prior to you as they are initially displayed on the screen. Finally, the hard game basically shows you a larger number of things from the lesson (without the narrator telling you what they are at first) and you have to pick the item asked for.
In my opinion, the downfall of this product was Level 1 Disk 2. The graphics went from easy to use and pleasing to watch to unintuitive and very childish looking. When I first loaded this CD-ROM, I thought the program was accusing me of using the software for commercial purposes with a Home use license. It did not take long to figure out how to access the lessons. On this disk, the basics of the lessons is that you are shown a picture and you will not be told what it is until you click a button. Then you see and hear what the object is in Spanish. In a lesson labeled "actions", I could not figure out what the pictures were trying to tell me. I restored to using the online dictionary Babel Fish. The pictures of a gorilla cooking bacon, and ant walking with boots, or cats flying delta winged aircraft with colored smoke just were not intuitive to me. Overall not a bad lesson, just a bit amateurish looking.
Both Level 2 disks and Level 3 Disk 2 were all basically the same. They taught phrases based on subject. You would be shown a picture with a phrase in Spanish. The phrase would be translated in English and then about 5 seconds later, it would be recited in Spanish. The only complaint I had about these lessons is that I know enough Spanish to know that some of the English translations were incomplete. A person new to Spanish may not notice this and would be essentially taught incorrectly.
While I did not use it extensively, Level 3 Disk 1 seemed to be a lot of fun. It was basically a series of basic games that taught the user how to follow directions in Spanish.
Overall, I was quite pleased with this software. At the current price of about $30, I thought it was a steal. Is it as good as Rosetta Stone? As I do not have $500 to spend on computer software, I have no idea (I can not see the point of spending 2 car payments on something when I can get something similar for the price of a night at Red Lobster). For $30, this software will give you a good introduction to Spanish. Having software like this when I was young and traveled to Spanish speaking countries would have been an asset. I have no illusion that I would be fluent by the end of the series, but I would have had a grasp of the basics and have learned enough words to figure out what a lot of people were telling me. By Level 2, the software reminded me a lot of a High School language class. There is a lot of phrases being taught that make you wonder what you would say that for, but in the process you are learning the vocabulary.
Throughout the lessons, you can print flash cards to assist you with vocabulary. At least with the cards I printed, I though they could have been better designed, but they were still helpful.
What I did not like about the experience:
The Amazon ad makes no mention of how important a microphone is. Without a microphone, part of the experience is lost (as I did not have one, I am not sure how much).
The lack of instructions can be intimidating. You have to be willing to jump in and click around to figure stuff out to use this software. There is no "lesson plan" that recommends the best use of this software.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 82
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