Features:  

Spanish Complete Edition has made some huge improvements in how they track what you have learned and how well you’ve done on tests. One feature that aids in the retaining process is a pie graph that shows in green what you have learned. After a while some parts of the graph will change from green to yellow; the yellow items are known as stale items. The program will give you the option to review them once again to refresh your memory and see if you are retaining the information you have learned.

The Spanish Complete Edition’s home page consists of multiple interactive books that keep track of your progress and let you select the lesson you want to work on. There are four books that comprise the series. The first two are beginner lessons and fundamentals. These two books will help build your vocabulary and learn the basics of Spanish. The last two books contain video files that teach more by listening than by reading and speaking.

One feature that is missing from almost every Spanish learning software package that we have reviewed is a feature that aids in the process of actual sentence structure. The basics for grammar, vocabulary and even pronunciation are covered but without the basic knowledge of forming sentences there is a gap in the learning process.

Fundamentals:  

Spanish Complete Edition has a variety of activities that help apply what you have learned; both the Complete Edition and Byki include materials for pronunciation, grammar, listening comprehension and other important fundamentals for covering the basics in learning a new language.

The tool most commonly used by Transparent Language is flash cards, which is composed of three different steps for memorizing and retaining the information. Step one is “Preview it,” wherein the English and Spanish word are displayed for you to practice. Step two is “Recognize it,” where you will only see the Spanish word and you will have to recognize what it means. Step three and, in our opinion, the most effective is “Produce it.” You will see the English word or phrase and have to type in the Spanish word (if the spelling isn’t exact it will mark it wrong, this includes caps and punctuation).