The Rosetta Stone Audio Companion CDs Are Mostly Useless

Seeing as how Rosetta Stone (relatively) recently released Levels 4 and 5 Set with Audio Companion, I decided to purchase the complete program (levels 1-5, see my complete review) both as a means of refreshing my Spanish skills and as a way to check out the latest and greatest from perhaps the best Spanish learning tool on the planet.
I was particularly interested in trying the Audio Companion CD’s advertised as coming with the program.  It’s been a while since I’ve used Rosetta Stone, and my previous experiences didn’t include any audio CD’s (I guess they didn’t exist back then).  I was looking forward to honing my pronunciation (a major strength of the computer program) and practicing useful conversations.  Sadly, I got neither.
The audio companion CD’s are nothing more than a listen-and-repeat version of the phrases covered in the corresponding computer lesson a la the Living Language Ultimate Spanish series.  Needless to say, this isn’t the most effective way to learn the language.  I mean sure, it’s better than nothing, but I expect more from a program as expensive as Rosetta Stone.  The complete Rosetta Stone program is upwards of $600 while Ultimate Spanish products are right at $100 for the complete program.  If I wanted listen and repeat, I would have bought Ultimate Spanish (actually, I did…not worth the money unless you can get it used for under $25, in my opinion).
That said, Rosetta Stone is still well worth buying.  It’s the best, most complete product I know of.  In conjunction with a good Spanish grammar aid (like the Practice Makes Perfect series), it can get you as close to fluency as you can get without traveling to a Spanish-speaking country and hiring a private tutor, for a fraction of the cost.  I just don’t appreciate the obvious money-grab of advertising the audio companions as a major pro of purchasing the program.  After all, if that method of learning Spanish actually worked, there would be no market for Rosetta Stone to begin with.
Buy Rosetta Stone from Amazon.com and see what all the talk is about.  It’s expensive, but I think it’s well worth the price if you are to learn to speak Spanish fluently.
A cheaper version of a Spaning learning program is here
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