Rosetta Stone or other Spanish programs?

That's one of the troubles with them pesky Messicans. Most are just too gracious to tell you different.

x2.

Don't know if this would workl for somebody on intermediate level, but it helped me a lot to get from "very basic" (read - a few phrases) to intermediate, including past and future tenses. Yes, I can "habla" now.

Coffee Break Spanish by Radio Lingua is the best of podcasts that I know, and it's free for download on Itunes. 80 lessons total.

Without ANY high-school Spanish, having started it at nearly-retirement age, I tried different free methods:

DVDs from library - rip, watch, repeat. Some success, not much. It should be fun, otherwise you won't learn. Standard Deviants series was fun - don't remember if I made it through 3 or 4 of their DVD before found Coffee Break. They do explain grammar in Deviants.

Textbooks - boring, and no interaction, no sounds, no feedback. Some grammar can only be explained through textbooks though.

Was about to buy some $$$ program, possibly that famous Rosetta, but then read an interesting research where they concluded that Rosetta IS NOT SUITABLE FOR ADULTS. Doesn't work well. Because adult brain needs explanations, while Rosetta doesn't explain anything, they talk in Spanish and show pictures - a lot of static pictures btw, not always a movie. Very interesting research, with statistical data showing that people who were happy with Rosetta, were mostly those in the process of learning, while people who have already learned, have used methods other than Rosetta, and majority of those were using podcasts. Yes, Rosetta includes online video-classes, don't know how many, but I'm sure not enough.

There are also nice series on Youtube, called Extra en Espanol - with subtitles both in Esp and Engl. Try different sources, 'cause sometimes subtitles are in Esp and Russian . Very funny series, but this is more for practice than learning. They use all the tenses and conjugations from the very 1st episode, and never explain anything.

Edit - PS: Why is this post here in General Questions? don't we have Spanish section on Nomads?

[Edited on 10-24-2014 by Alm]

Practice makes it perfect. Speaking with locals helps, but only after you've already learned enough vocabulary and past/future/conditional/subjunctive grammar.

Podcasts worked for me because my work involves a lot of waiting (read - waiting for action). Management is OK with me having ear buds from Smartphone on such times, from their point of view this is better than reading a newspaper or snoring. OTH, I had a huge incentive to listen to podcasts because had nothing better to do

I downloaded all the Coffee Break lessons from Itunes, they are numbered 1 to 80. I renamed them by adding the endings "-Preter", "Fut", "Perf", "Health" etc, and listened off-line. Repetition is the key, you're not going to learn anything if listen to it only once. MP3 player or Ipod or any Smartphone - whatever you have.

Coffee Podcasts are free, transcripts are not. They are Scottish, but you'll soon get used to accent. Also, they use both Spaniard's "TH" sound for S,Z,C and Mexican "S" sound for the same, can be distracting at times. I did familiarize myself with basic grammar and pronunciation prior to this, so could figure out the spelling of most words without transcripts. Standard Deviants DVD and (very boring) printouts from Spanish Grammar helped me with grammar.

Btw, Spanish.about.com is an excellent source for grammar when you can't grasp something otherwise.

Duolingo I didn't know about, have checked it just now, seems like too simple and too brief course. Not enough practice, examples and repetition, and too much typing. Try it though, maybe you'll like it.

Here is a nice interactive series:
Mi vida loca

and podcasts that I listened to before had found Coffee Break Spanish: Discover Spanish. 6 units *6 lessons, 36 lessons total. Short basic course, but maybe this is what you need. Download it so that you'll skip the annoying intro at the beginning of each lesson.

Different things work for different people.

[Edited on 10-26-2014 by Alm]

If you do try Rosetta Stone, be sure to also use the Audio Companion to Rosetta Stone. I find it to be very helpful. Once you have run through the actual PC/Laptop chapter... you then play the Audio Companion in your car, or on your walk. Every time a word or concept comes up, your brain sees the image that you studied last week on the PC.
Works great... all that's left now is some discipline