Learn to speak Spanish like a diplomat
The only program based on how diplomats really learn Spanish
Comments on "Rocket Spanish"
                    
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| A couple of old Venezuelan bills. The top one shows Bolívar with Sucre (wait for the Ecuadorean national day for more about Sucre); the bottom one shows the monument to the Battle of Carabobo, the final battle in Bolívar's campaign for independence from Spain. |
Who Else Wants to Learn to
Speak Spanish Confidently
and Naturally in less than 3 months??
... AND take all the frustration, difficulty and headache out of YOUR practice time with this EXPLOSIVE interactive 'learn Spanish' package!
The above is taken from the Rocket Spanish website. This kind of hype really sets me off. You simply can't learn Spanish at any significant level of proficiency in this short time, even studying full-time with the best of programs--which Rocket Spanish may be for all I know.
The Foreign Service Institute takes four months or more to bring a beginner to a significant level of proficiency. And that's working with talented students, many on their second or third foreign language.
To claim that a "wonder program" can do better is, in my mind, false advertising. I can only refer to my own experience, in which it took 16 weeks of full time study (6 hours a day in class) to achieve significant proficiency. And I already had learned four languages at the FSI 3 or ACTFL full proficiency level. see here for an explanation of proficiency .
Claims like "Rocket Spanish (by the way, where do they dig up these names?) infuriate me because many innocent would-be Spanish learners will take them seriously
I really have nothing more to say about "Rocket Spanish" because I'm already foaming at the mouth.
By all means, buy "Rocket Spanish" if you believe their claims. If not, there are plenty of other programs available.
Over 300 million people speak Spanish as a first language, and 90% of them are in the Western Hemisphere.
Spanish is one of the "easiest" languages for an English speaker to learn.
Lawrence Eagleburger was the U.S. Secretary of State during the first Gulf War. Read what he has to say about the program here.
