Ease of Use:  

Although Instant Immersion is incredibly fast and easy to install, it is a little difficult to figure out on the first go-around. Because there are nine discs, it took us a while to get comfortable navigating through each one. This being said, once we got that figured out this was a pretty easy program to use.

Teaching Tools:  

Instant Immersion has plenty to offer Spanish students. It uses images, audio and visual, as well as interactive lessons, to ensure you retain the information quickly. Lessons range in topic from simple words such as, “Hello”, to complicated dialogue regarding a variety of situations. Each level also has games so you can practice what you’ve learned thus far. We found this to be a fun and effective way of retaining information.

The speech recognition software included with Instant Immersion Spanish is excellent. The software accurately measures your voice and tells you which words you pronounce wrong. You can even adjust the judgment level for the speech recognition to be lenient or strict. Instant Immersion also has native Spanish speakers so you can hear the difference between your pronunciation and theirs.

Instant Immersion offers a wide variety of activities and games designed to support retention and maintain interest. Their most elaborate game, “Who Is Oscar Lake?” requires you to navigate an environment and interactive with native Spanish-speakers in order to solve a mystery. Each disc also comes with a quiz so you can test your Spanish before moving on to the next level.

Word Tools:  

We were actually pretty discouraged with the lack of word tools Instant Immersion offers. They do have a reference tab in the program, but the information isn’t very helpful.

Help/Support:  

Instant Immersion, who only offers technical support through their parent company TOPICS Entertainment, has one of the weakest support systems of any program we reviewed. There is no apparent FAQ section, and their support page is only an assortment of disjointed documents. The Instant Immersion website is alarmingly light on information about its products, too. There is no email or phone support option, although you can log a question at the bottom of the technical support page and receive a list of documents that may or may not answer your question.

For the price, we could not be happier with Instant Immersion Spanish. It has most of the features we would expect from a Learn Spanish Software. We especially liked the bonus discs which added greatly to the program. However, we were also disappointed with Instant Immersion in regards to technical help, and would have also liked to see a feature for online chat with native speakers. Check out Tell Me More Spanish, our top rated product, if you want a well rounded program.