Use Rosetta Stone Spanish For Free At Your Local Library

Yesterday I wrote about finding used Rosetta Stone Spanish software (read my full Rosetta Stone review here).  However, if you aren’t able to find a good deal or simply can’t fit it in your budget, there’s another option:  the public library.  Many public libraries carry at least Level I of the Rosetta Stone software for a variety of languages, including Spanish, and some of them carry all three languages.  There are a few pitfalls to relying on the library for your Spanish-learning needs, however.

Advantages

• It’s Free – An obvious advantage, but that’s about it

Caveats

• You Can’t Listen And Repeat – Repeating after a native speaker is a great way to perfect your pronunciation.  Unfortunately, libraries usually prefer if you keep silent.
• You Can’t Use The Voice Recognition Feature - Rosetta Stone’s best feature, the voice recognition module, is rendered useless in a public library.
• Time Limit – It would be difficult to get much quality study-time in with somebody always waiting impatiently in the background.

All in all, this obviously isn’t an ideal solution.  Sure it’s free, but there are plenty of other ways to learn Spanish for very little money.  At most, I’d consider combining this with those other methods.