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Why don’t people here like Rosetta Stone? | ||
Tags: Rosetta Stone | Usefulness | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| dec_lan Newbie United States Joined 5299 days ago 18 posts - 23 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin | Message 81 of 93 12 July 2010 at 11:13pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I got Michele Thomas and it's very good. His (it's not actually Thomas, it's his protege) condescending voice makes me want to punch him in the throat, but it's still very good. They're explaining a lot of stuff they just didn't in RS.
Anyway, this has turned into a mud flinging pit. Is there any way I can take this puppy out back and put it out of its misery? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| zekecoma Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5372 days ago 561 posts - 655 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish | Message 82 of 93 14 July 2010 at 2:35am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Well lets see I have German all levels. - The speech recognising system half of the time doesn't work. - Doesn't teach you grammar - Very slow - You don't really know what you are learning from pictures. - To be really frank, all you are learning out of it is how to say scripted sentences and only that Even if you do go through all the levels. You expect to be native fluent? You barely even a high A1 by the time you're finished at most. I bought a book for $10 used and I've learned over 160 in about 2 weeks and learned how to describe my family, the weather, phone conversations, days, months, and so far only two cases right now. How you going to learn Nominative, Accusative, Dative, Genitive cases from Rosetta Stone? How you going to learn this. Ich kann jetzt Ferngespräche machen? in Rosetta Stone? Or I think you are very beautiful, how can I have sex with you right now? Rosetta is nice on the pronunciation if only just that. But you don't get crap out of it that even remotely justifies anything. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6467 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 83 of 93 14 July 2010 at 3:13am | IP Logged | ||||||||
I think you're being a little too harsh. A lot can be learned about grammar from example sentences, without explicit study of grammar - this certainly isn't a perfect method, but it's more than usable. Similarly, people can generalize quite a lot from a reasonable selection of sample sentences - look at any decent language learning aptitude test. No beginner program will teach you to say everything you want or be natively fluent, but relatively few people on this forum are naive enough to believe that it would, which makes that a bit of a straw man. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5458 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 84 of 93 14 July 2010 at 4:01am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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For some reason that I don't fully comprehend Rosetta Stone gets a lot of people all worked up in this forum. Is it really that bad? I've looked at it, but I haven't used it, and I'm not interested. But some people do like it. If you go to the Amazon website, there are lots of glowing reviews. O.K. there may be some shills out there, but it seems that a lot of people like the program. What gives? It's a good thing that Rosetta Stone doesn't depend on us to make money.
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| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6467 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 85 of 93 14 July 2010 at 4:32am | IP Logged | ||||||||
People who tend to give it glowing reviews tend to be relatively new to language learning - somewhat like people who recommend Pimsleur, though that has more dedicated fans with experience too. If it opens new doors or gives them a taste of success after years of bitter failures, and they don't know anything better, why wouldn't they praise it to the skies? 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| TerryW Senior Member United States Joined 6385 days ago 370 posts - 783 votes Speaks: English* | Message 86 of 93 14 July 2010 at 5:42am | IP Logged | ||||||||
I agree. Unlike a lot of "serious" courses, where they encounter all of these strange new sounds and spellings, which can make them quit right away, they get to match up some pretty pictures with the spoken voices. The one TV commercial includes a lady that says "I believe you can learn (pause) ANY language with this program!" Now, we don't know if: a) she is just an actress reading a script, or b) she played around with the program for a half hour, was able to easily match up boy/girl/man/woman and car/boat/plane/bicycle with the corresponding picture quadrants, and then thinks to herself: "Wow, I'll be fluent in no time!" or c) she completed Rosetta Spanish 1 thru 5 and has a great working knowledge of the language. But I'd have to bet it's a) or b). Edited by TerryW on 14 July 2010 at 5:51am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| liddytime Pentaglot Senior Member United States mainlymagyar.wordpre Joined 6257 days ago 693 posts - 1328 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Galician Studies: Hungarian, Vietnamese, Modern Hebrew, Norwegian, Persian, Arabic (Written) | Message 87 of 93 14 July 2010 at 6:19am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Rosetta Stone is a publicly traded company. Their primary goal is to make money for themselves and their shareholders. I really don;t think they give two hoots whether you learn anything from their overpriced programs or not. Their goal is to sell software...period... If you can learn from RS, great. My bet is if you tried the other methods mentioned in this forum first, you would be very happy with the results at a fraction of the cost! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| tractor Tetraglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5481 days ago 1349 posts - 2292 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, Catalan Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 88 of 93 14 July 2010 at 12:23pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
No, it's not that bad. I think it can be a nice supplement to other methods. It's just way too expensive for what you get. In my opinion you'd be better off spending 10 $ on a Berlitz Self-Teacher book than several hundreds on RS. Edited by tractor on 14 July 2010 at 12:29pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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