Instant Immersion Spanish

Instant Immersion Spanish

Editor Rating: Good (3.0)


Instant Immersion Spanish - Instant Immersion Spanish

    As you may have gathered from the title, Topics Entertainment's Instant Immersion Spanish takes the immersion approach to learning Spanish. Does that mean you're thrown sink-or-swim into the pool of Spanish culture? The four-CD package is more merciful than that.

    Newbies can start with the Talk Now! disk, which uses multimedia flash cards for colors, numbers, and key words and phrases. You pick a section, then male and female characters take turns pronouncing words for you. After that, you're quizzed via a series of simple games.

    The second disk, World Talk Spanish, is similar in structure to Talk Now! but kicks up the intensity a few notches. You get a lot less help in English, forcing you to rely on what you've learned to get through the drills. (The look and feel of the second disk are completely different from the first part, making the transition a bit disorienting.)

    The third disk contains Webster's New World Five-Language Talking Dictionary, a contextual pop-up dictionary with an audio pronunciation feature that translates English words into French, Spanish, German, Italian, and Dutch. And on the fourth disk, you'll find the fun and challenging interactive mystery game "Who Is Oscar Lake?" The Instant Immersion package may strike more jaded users as being dangerously low-tech, but its price and ease of use are ideal for those planning a short vacation to Mexico or Spain. The company also sells programs that teach German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, and Russian.