Jordan Shapiro is author of FREEPLAY: A Video Game Guide to Maximum Euphoric Bliss and co-editor of Occupy Psyche: Jungian and Archetypal Perspectives on a Movement. For information on his upcoming books and events click here. And I’m excited to discover if my kids learn spanish as we review each of the games. I’m excited to see the apps Rosetta Stone builds as they flesh out this franchise of direct to consumer apps for kids. I should also mention that, like most learning apps, there is a parents section in Lingo Letter Sounds that allows parents to track their kids progress, or adapt the settings to increase the difficulty. It increases the amount of Spanish words it introduces based on the quality of pronunciation. Likely, this is because the app is adaptive. My son enjoyed talking in Spanish to the GoGo Lingo characters and while I’m not sure he played enough to remember any of the words, his pronunciation certainly improved.

Proprietary speech recognition technology. Ability to learn on iOS and most Android devices. The Rosetta Stone website claims that “research shows that early exposure to foreign language sounds simultaneously strengthens children's reading skills in their first language while jump-starting their ability to learn a new one.” Download for free today and get: Access to the first lesson of each of our 24 languages. What separates Lingo Letter Sounds from other literacy apps is the inclusion of Spanish. As always, you should play with your kids. You can’t just throw a tablet in your kids hands and expect them to master phonics. Don’t expect Lingo Letter Sounds to be a comprehensive literacy curriculum. The reading part of the app is essentially an engaging way for kids to practice phonics based letter recognition. And the reward and reinforcement system is good-kids win virtual “toys” when they solve each puzzle and the GoGo Lingo characters respond to your kids' Spanish pronunciation.

My son and I have been playing with Lingo Letter Sounds for the last few days. My 6 year old son had a much higher success rate with his scratchy and squeaky yelling than I do with my adult voice. And whatever they did to make it kid-friendly worked. They use it for teaching basic Spanish phrases.

Lingo Letter Sounds only makes slight use of Rosetta Stone’s excellent speech recognition. All in preparation for the upcoming suite of apps. Rosetta Stone has been training the computer, using kids voices, for a while now. Price (advantage Rosetta Stone): Reading Eggs is 69 per year per child, and there are discounts for additional children. Stringfellow explained to me that the Rosetta Stone speech recognition engine has been “adapted to kids’ speech patterns.” Apparently, because of a number of physical differences, including a smaller palate, kids have distinct speech idiosyncrasies that confuse a computer.

Rosetta stone spanish for kids