megazver Triglot Newbie Lithuania Joined 5992 days ago 34 posts - 52 votes Speaks: Lithuanian, Russian*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Polish
| Message 9 of 14 06 March 2012 at 5:13pm | IP Logged |
Fluenz is better that Rosetta Stone, but not worth the $$$$ that they want for it, IMO.
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atama warui Triglot Senior Member Japan Joined 4699 days ago 594 posts - 985 votes Speaks: German*, English, Japanese
| Message 10 of 14 06 March 2012 at 7:03pm | IP Logged |
What did RS 2 that RS 3 doesn't? Did it drill more?
I can get RS 3 here and sometimes use it for those pesky problem words that refuse to sink in. I also use other silly stuff, like "Knuckles in Chinaland" or "JRPG" for Kanji and vocab.. also memrise and VocabULearn, currently working on getting GradInt to work properly.
IMHO, diversity is king. RS might not be the one-stop-shop the company markets it as, but it's not "good for nothing" either.
I can't compare it to Fluenz, there doesn't seem to exist a version for Japanese.
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tmp011007 Diglot Senior Member Congo Joined 6067 days ago 199 posts - 346 votes Speaks: Spanish*, English Studies: French, Portuguese
| Message 11 of 14 06 March 2012 at 11:07pm | IP Logged |
atama warui wrote:
What did RS 2 that RS 3 doesn't? Did it drill more? |
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RS2 does have much more vocabulary
RS2 curriculum texts
http://success.rosettastone.com/ics/support/DLList.asp?task= download&folderID=792
RS3 & 4 course contents
http://success.rosettastone.com/ics/support/DLList.asp?task= download&folderID=782
if you really find RS useful I guess it would be better to extract the contents of those pdfs and add them to mnemosyne/anki/memorylifter/vtrain/etc
...
Fluenz is not my cup of tea either but it's a little bit better than RS ... so, IMNSHO:
Fluenz is better than RS
Tell Me More is better than Fluenz
Strokes is better than Tell Me More
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atama warui Triglot Senior Member Japan Joined 4699 days ago 594 posts - 985 votes Speaks: German*, English, Japanese
| Message 12 of 14 07 March 2012 at 12:58am | IP Logged |
Hmm there doesn't even seem to exist a level 3 Japanese for RS v2. Do those 2 levels of the old version still include more vocab than the 3 levels of v3? Hard to tell from a PDF.
Did you actually count the items?
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tmp011007 Diglot Senior Member Congo Joined 6067 days ago 199 posts - 346 votes Speaks: Spanish*, English Studies: French, Portuguese
| Message 13 of 14 07 March 2012 at 2:52am | IP Logged |
actually, it's not that hard. just compare the German versions (RS2 vs R3/4)..
if you'd like try to use a word frequency counter like, I don't know, writewords but it is not really necessary.. those two RS2 levels have much more vocabulary than five RS3&4 ones (literally)..
of course, I'm talking just about vocabulary; RS3&4 is(are) better in some other ways
edit. they do include a word and frequency list (the English version at least, dunno about the others):
RS2 lvl 1 pg 65 - 83
RS2 lvl 2 pg 86 - 131
RS3&4 lvl 1 pg 44 - 50
RS3&4 lvl 2 pg 44 - 54
RS3&4 lvl 3 pg 44 - 58
..
RS3&4 lvl 4 pg 44 - 61
RS3&4 lvl 5 pg 50 - 71
Edited by tmp011007 on 07 March 2012 at 5:16pm
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joesoefkalla Newbie Indonesia Joined 4710 days ago 22 posts - 22 votes Studies: English
| Message 14 of 14 01 July 2012 at 12:51pm | IP Logged |
For me, Fluenz is the real thing. But since some people perhaps find it difficult to begin with, then it makes sense to start with Rosetta Stone first, just to grasp some basic grammar.
I'm just starting with Mandarin, anyway.
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