Well then full-disclosure, I'm a Mormon, I served the usual 2-year mission speaking Spanish, and I used to work on said software :) The church operates Mission

Well then full-disclosure, I'm a Mormon, I served the usual 2-year mission speaking Spanish, and I used to work on said software :) The church operates Missionary Training Centers with the main one in Provo, UT and other smaller centers distributed around the world. When somebody starts their mission they go there for a few weeks for a crash course in how to teach religious priniciples, the policies for missionaries, etc. A lot of missionaries are assigned to foreign countries or even language-specific assignments in the US. Those missionaries stay for 2-3 months to learn the language. It tries to be a fairly immersive program, taught by native speakers of the language and former missionaries, and has a fairly significant software component to it as well. I don't know specifics first-hand, but it was widely spoken about that groups in governments, etc... would visit to learn more about why the program was so effective in so little time. I don't think it's entirely the software, it's a pretty good program all-around - but it's certainly nothing to dismiss. edit: The main website is http://www.mtc.byu.edu http://www.mtc.byu.edu, but as language learning consulting is hardly their main goal, I doubt you'll find much more of an answer to your question there.