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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 |  | |
| johntm93 Senior Member United States Joined 5355 days ago 587 posts - 746 votes  2 sounds Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish | Message 49 of 93 01 July 2010 at 4:25am | IP Logged | |||||
Also, I haven't personally used it myself (I have read a lot of reviews though, and my dad has a demo disc that I won't use), but the whole premise of "learning like a child" doesn't seem like the best idea for me. If you already know a language (or more), why not use it to your advantage to learn another? Like mnemonic (isn't that what they're called?) tricks and whatnot. Also, to reverse the OP's question: Why do people like RS? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| flydream777 Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 6519 days ago 77 posts - 102 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French Studies: German, Russian, Portuguese, Mandarin, Greek, Hungarian, Armenian, Irish, Italian | Message 50 of 93 01 July 2010 at 4:40am | IP Logged | |||||
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I dont understand the "learn like a child" concept anyway... It takes kids several YEARS to be able to string a decent sentence together. Why is that an advantage???
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 LauraM Pro Member United States Joined 5380 days ago 77 posts - 97 votes Studies: German Personal Language Map | Message 51 of 93 01 July 2010 at 6:35am | IP Logged | |||||
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It's funny. I belong to a homeschooling community and although I have never even seen the program, many of the
parents RAVE about having used it on their children (the public library used to have it, therefore it was free if you used it through them), but it always puzzled me that NONE of them could express a simple thought of their own after using the program. I guess that just made me uninterested... 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| dec_lan Newbie United States Joined 5299 days ago 18 posts - 23 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin | Message 52 of 93 01 July 2010 at 2:27pm | IP Logged | |||||
Well, any actual quality of the product aside, because of marketing. Also, for the people who it does actually work for, they'll love it because it told them "You WILL learn with this program", and they did (even if they learned in a massively inefficient way). It's like what I said above with exercise equipment. People like to believe that an easy way has finally been found, and RS is it. RS knows this and capitalizes on it. The only reason it actually works and people buy it (where for the most part all the exercise equipment fails) is because we're so used to every single exercise equipment giving this claim. Very few other language learning programs say the the same brash stuff RS does. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| cm006j Newbie United States whitehindu.blogspot. Joined 5322 days ago 23 posts - 28 votes Studies: Mandarin, Hindi, Sign Language | Message 53 of 93 01 July 2010 at 3:34pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I've always wanted to be bilingual. I tried very hard when I was young and I had that sense that I must be really bad at this because nothing was working. I have a cousin who picks up languages very rapidly and I could never do what she did.
Rosetta Stone came along and changed my life. The repetition of hearing native speakers and seeing objects without any English translation really changed the way I thought about and understood the language. I could feel it, I could hear it randomly flitting through my thoughts from day one. I was not bored by the pace at all, though some people say that. I was excited to see what the next lesson would bring. I started learning verb tenses and "helping" verbs. Hindi has a lot of verbs that are two words and knowing which two words go together is difficult. Memorizing tables of combinations didn't work. With Rosetta Stone, I know which word is right because it just sounds right, the same way I know something is right in English. Bad grammar just sounds absurd in English and now it does in Hindi too because I've heard the right combinations so many times. I can come up with phrases and put them together and create new sentences. I speak to my dog in Hindi and I quickly figured out how to say "I've got your ear!" :) The vocabulary and grammar I've learned from Rosetta Stone has gotten deep, deep into my brain. It comes to my mind quickly and naturally. After getting most of the way through the Rosetta Stone three Hindi levels, after about six months, I was ready to try more materials and started supplementing it. Now I use flashcards, books, movies, native materials, youtube, all kinds of stuff, but I would never have been able to understand them without the foundation of Rosetta Stone. I have no problem with people not thinking it works for them. Some people like this method others have other ways. That's fine. I really don't understand the venom with which people talk about the company. They've created a beautiful product that I'm grateful for and they work to save endangered languages, what's so terrible? If you don't want to use it, don't. I'm so glad that Rosetta Stone exists and that they do what they do. I'd be happy if they made these products only for me! When I'm ready to start my next language, I will absolutely go to them next, even after I've read tons of blogs and this forum about how to learn language. They give me the foundation that I want. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6039 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 54 of 93 01 July 2010 at 4:56pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Rosetta Stone's success is more than just marketing, it's about the package itself making you feel good.
It's about tests and scoreboards. Rosetta Stone gives learners a very visual representation of progress, but their idea of progress is how well you can cope with their software, and the software certainly teaches you how to use the software! If the learner gets positive reinforcement telling him how well he's doing, he'll believe it. If he finds he's not able to deal with real language, he'll assume that's all he could expect. hobbitofny, Thanks for the Pimsleur figures for comparison. They're claiming to gain 4 levels in 15 hours, or 6 levels in 45. Even if they're exagerrating, they can't be exagerrating that much more than RS. And they're claiming to be over 4 times as effecient as RS. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| cm006j Newbie United States whitehindu.blogspot. Joined 5322 days ago 23 posts - 28 votes Studies: Mandarin, Hindi, Sign Language | Message 55 of 93 01 July 2010 at 5:16pm | IP Logged | |||||
Shrug. Well, I've been able to use the language and understand the language in real settings. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| hobbitofny Senior Member United States Joined 6261 days ago 280 posts - 408 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Russian | Message 56 of 93 01 July 2010 at 5:18pm | IP Logged | |||||
They assume one listen per lesson and you get 80% of the stuff. For me it is an average of 2 or 3 listens to get to 80%. It also depends on the lessons. For me the numbers did not sink in. If it is were not for new numbers in the lesson, I would have moved throught the lessons faster. It might be better stated that after mastering the 15 hours of audio at 80% or better you gain 4 levels. For a person good at languages that is 15 hours. For a person slow to pick up languages (me), it is about 35 hours work. Edited by hobbitofny on 01 July 2010 at 6:51pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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