My Rocket Spanish Review

A look at every feature of the course

My name is Noah Benjamin and I taught myself how to speak conversational Spanish in about two months. If you haven’t already, you can read more about how I did that here. This page is a quick Rocket Spanish review that I’ve put up. I’ve tried to include appropriate screenshots and to see a 22 minute video review I made scroll to the very bottom of the page.

Overview of Rocket Spanish

Rocket Spanish is an entry into the “learn Spanish from home” market. I, personally, have always advocated learning Spanish in another country, living with a family that only speaks the language. This, however, is not a reasonable demand for most people, so I’ve gone through the trouble of purchasing and reviewing most major learn-at-home programs to see which provides the best experience.

Rocket Spanish is different from many programs in one major way: it’s completely downloadable and accessable from anywhere in the world. I opted to use it locally on my computer, as demonstrated in my video review, but everything is accessable from their web site at any time.

Rocket Spanish is made up of three primary modules: audio lessons, instruction guides, and the MegaSpanish application.

Audio Lessons

In my mind, the absolute best way to learn Spanish is through audio learning. You can listen to audio tracks in your car, while you’re exercising, or really during any “down time” that you have. Audio lessons, when done right, also emulate real Spanish conversations — you listen to native Spanish speakers, and speak back to them in Spanish.

Rocket Spanish’s basic package includes a little over 16 hours of audio lessons. They focus primarily on conversational Spanish, meaning Spanish that you can use right away in everyday situations. There are free samples on their web site.

The main focus of the Rocket Spanish program, to my delight, is the audio lessons. The entire program revolves around the subjects you learn in each lesson.

The audio lessons also are of very high quality. The creators of the Rocket Spanish program, Mauricio Evlampieff and Amy Waterman, narrate and guide you through each section. Again, free samples are available on their web site.

Instructions Guides

Rocket Spanish is packed with over 500 pages of instruction guides.

The main guides are a beginner’s grammar guide, a conversation course, and an advanced grammar guide. You also get vocabulary supplements, printable flash cards, and more.

The beginner’s grammar guide follows along with the audio lessons, providing you with the basics of Spanish grammar, as well as important vocabulary. The conversation guide goes a step further by helping you with the intricacies of actual Spanish conversational basics, including common vocabulary and phrases. The advanced grammar guide gives you the “finishing touches” — how to speak with (and understand) more precise grammatical structures.

The instruction guides are top-notch. Again, they tie in directly with what you learn in the audio lessons, teaching the “how” and “why” behind every grammar concept presented. The grammar lessons are straight-forward and are well-grounded in real examples. I compare them with standard Spanish text-books, but more accessible.

The extra guides are also great supplements. The vocab supplement, in my mind, is probably the greatest bonus. It provides you with some of the most important vocabulary words you need in every day Spanish. The truth is, with around 1,000 to 2,000 Spanish words, you can be conversational.

MegaSpanish

MegaSpanish is a supplement to the Rocket Spanish program. It’s almost like flash cards on steroids. To see it in action, take a look at my Rocket Spanish video review, posted below. I personally did not use MegaSpanish too much when I was studying with Rocket Spanish, but it is still a valuable addition.

There are three parts to MegaSpanish — MegaVocab, MegaAudio, and MegaVerbs.

MegaVocab quizzes you on over 1,000 pieces of Spanish vocabulary, and is expandable, meaning you can always add more words later. It uses pictures to help you “visualize” every Spanish word.

MegaAudio speaks vocabulary out loud to you, and has you choose from a series of pictures to identify the word spoken.

MegaVerbs is possibly the most important, and most overlooked, part of MegaSpanish. It simply gives you a verb, and has you conjugate it based on the requirements they give you. This is what you’re going to have to be doing in your head all the time while speaking Spanish, so practicing this habit is very important!

MegaSpanish isn’t given much justice without being seen, so I recommend watching my Rocket Spanish video review below to see it in action.

How fast can you learn Spanish with Rocket Spanish?

Based on my own experience, and the experience of others I’ve helped, you can realistically be conversational in Spanish in about two months with Rocket Spanish.

What I mean by this is that you would be able to travel to Latin America and get by just fine. You won’t be discussing metaphysics, the meaning of life, or profound political subjects, but you’ll be ordering food, finding places to sleep, and more without issue.

The course itself gives a guideline on the best schedule for learning, pictured below. If you follow this schedule, you’ll progress very quickly.

And on top of that, Rocket Spanish has a 60 day money back guarantee. If you aren’t learning how you thought you’d be, you have 60 days to get your money back. I don’t think I’ve seen a guarantee like that anywhere else.

My overall take on Rocket Spanish

I actually wasn’t expecting much from Rocket Spanish since I’ve been ripped off a lot on online purchases. But, for $99, this program absolutely blew me away, and is on par with programs many times its price.

Again, I recommend audio learning as the best way to learn Spanish, and have traditionally recommended audio-only programs that cost up to 5x as much as Rocket Spanish alone. (Pimsleur, anyone?) Audio learning can be performed anytime, anywhere, and provides the closest thing to real-life experience that you can get in a Spanish language program.

Everything else in the Rocket Spanish package ties in perfectly with the audio courses, and will provide you completely with the foundation you need to speak and understand Spanish.

And, like I mentioned before, Rocket Spanish has a 60 day money back guarantee. No other language learning package has a guarantee like that. If you’re not learning like you thought you would, or even if you just realize you don’t like the program, you can return it anytime within 60 days and get your money back. That shows a lot of confidence in the package.

To find out more about Rocket Spanish or to purchase it, click here.

22 Minute Video Review

The following is a video review I made for Rocket Spanish. Check it out to see every feature in-depth and working in real time. I start with actually purchasing the program, so skip to 2:37 to start seeing the course in action.

http://www.vimeo.com/4268573

Again, for more information on Rocket Spanish or to purchase it, click here.

To your continued learning,

Noah Benjamin