Although Instant Immersion Spanish isn’t in our top three, that doesn’t mean it is not a fantastic piece of software. Instant Immersion includes multiple lessons and activities which cover a broad array of topics, hitting hard on the fundamentals of the Spanish language.
Instant Immersion is relatively easy to navigate and offers both audio and visual demonstrations. We were very impressed with the number of ways Instant Immersion presents information, and feel confident that this program will be conducive to all learning styles. We were especially impressed with Instant Immersion’s speech recognition system which allowed us to practice the pronunciation of each word or phrase and compare it to the audio teacher.
Although Instant Immersion does not possess the excellent online chat and testing options its language learning software counterparts do, they have tried to increase the value of the product by including audio CD lessons, an interactive DVD, and the Who Is Oscar Lake? mystery game where you must crack a case using only Spanish.
While the extra programs are useful, they also make the learning environment cumbersome because you must switch back and forth between disks. Combine that with less-than-adequate support and Instant Immersion just doesn't have enough momentum to make it into our top three.
Instant Immersion Spanish does a great job of presenting a variety of activities. Everything is interactive and customizable; there is no set path you must follow, which we felt made the process much more interesting and fun. Each lesson has multiple options you can choose from which play to the strengths of most learning styles. Depending on what level you’re on, these options include important stand alone words, common phrases, and the correct response to a variety of questions.
Instant Immersion offers great features, with an excellent progress tracking system that allows you to see where you have done well, and where you need improvement. To make this deal even better, Instant Immersion offers three bonus discs designed to enhance your Spanish education.
However, we were discouraged to find that Instant Immersion does not provide online testing and online chat with native Spanish speakers, two features we praised our top product for having.
Instant Immersion covers all the basics of learning a language through a variety of workshops and activities. Some improve pronunciation through the use of a sophisticated speech recognition program. Some focus on grammar rules and vocabulary retention. And still others allow you to practice conversations with native Spanish speakers.
Instant Immersion comes in a nine disc set which is broken down into three levels, with three bonus discs. In the first level you can begin learning with picture-word association, matching a Spanish word to a familiar picture. Related to this learning task is the word-match task, where you match an English word to a Spanish one. Another exercise includes placing a vocabulary word in context by filling in the blanks of a sentence.
The second level in dedicated to more advanced phrases, and incorporates dialogue between two individuals. In this section the speech recognition tool will be extremely useful. The third level is fairly similar to the second, but offers more advanced phrases and dialogue.
However, we didn’t find any functions in this program that explained sentence structure. This puts the student at a disadvantage because, although they’ll have certain phrases memorized, they may not understand the make-up of the sentence.
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