Spanish Immersion Programs

[SmileyEH]

I'm going to be living in argentina for several months this winter, but I don't know any spanish yet. There seems to be about a million courses in Spain that I could take for a few weeks before I go (i'll be backpacking around europe anyway this fall). Any reccomendations for good programs or just what I should be looking for would be awesome. Thanks.

-SmileyEH

[DasLeben]

Rosetta Stone is a good one, but moved a bit too slow for my tastes. But considering you probably want to learn to just speak it (as opposed to writing, etc.), then I'd consider something like Pimsleur or the Barron's "Mastering" series. I have Barron's "Mastering German" and find it great. It's repetitious as hell, but I can rattle off German much faster and fluently with this than with any of the fancier (and much more expensive) programs.

[Indiana]

As a spanish speaker whose native tounge is English, I advise you to find a good Spanish course here in the states first so that you can learn how the verb conjugations correlate to English. Don't worry too much about fitting into the culture, its more important to learn how to speak. Going abroad to learn could be fun after you have had a course here in the US. Learning the culture and "fitting in" is much tougher and it will take years before they no longer consider you an outsider. I lived in Venezuela for 2 yrs as a youngster and I never made it to a level where I could really connect with the locals culturally.

Indy

[lucas9000]

i'd like to do this spanish immersion program (http://images.google.com/images?q=salma%20hayek&hl=en&hs=hev&lr=&c2coff=1&c lient=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&sa=N&tab=wi)