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Rosetta Stone Version 3 | ||
Tags: Rosetta Stone | Usefulness | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| MerryHearted Diglot Newbie United States Joined 6746 days ago 22 posts - 23 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Spanish, Mandarin | Message 9 of 15 25 February 2008 at 10:54am | IP Logged | ||
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It's still keeping my interest well; not bored yet although there are certainly sections that are very easy. Eventually it'll get harder I imagine.
Vocab-building wise, I'm not sure: there aren't actually that many words in the RS course. I pulled the Level 1 word list from their downloadable PDF into an XL spreadsheet and there's ~750. But that's counting proper names and obvious plurals (pelota, pelotas = 2 words) not to mention conjugations of the same word (tengo, tiene, etc). So I'm guessing there's a whole lot less than 750 for level 1. Has anyone seen them say anywhere how many words are covered? One of these days a geek mood will hit me and I'll parse it out. :) I have a strange love affair with lists. Full-fledged training course? It's certainly now more like traditional learning in it's presentation of the material. Definitely more focus on grammar, sound distinctions, spelling and the like, without losing the visual "immersion" feel. The pictures, by the way, are way better than in RS v2. I'm not far enough in yet to tell if the integrated speech will increase. Right now, I think it's still not enough to put it on par with other courses, but I do know that the ideology (not the right word, but it's not coming to me...) behind RS is one of imitation in the early stages and waiting for more productive language later. So it's quite possible that the productive speech portions will increase in levels 2 and 3. There's still quite a bit of the imitative speech at the place I'm at in the course, but because it's integrated and not all in it's own section, it's not nearly as boring. I wonder if their new eSchool is meant to address the lack of productive language in the course. My guess is yes, since that's a common criticism of RS. I'll tell you this: I'm a homeschooling parent. I still don't think I'd choose RS as a full-fledged training course for at least one remaining reason: its culture-neutrality. It would require supplementation for at least that, and I think also for production skills. Not just conversational practice with a live person, but productive writing as well. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| AlexL Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7083 days ago 197 posts - 277 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Italian | Message 10 of 15 25 February 2008 at 4:26pm | IP Logged | ||
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I've used Spanish III v3, and it's much better than version 2. There's a greater variety of activities than in v1, and also, I like that it sort of "makes" you do some of everything; reading, writing, speaking, listening. The interface is MUCH nicer and easier on the eyes, and it's just a lot less boring to go through.
There is some speech interactivity. A lot of the speech in the program is repeating after the speaker, but occasionally, you'll be prompted and have to say the sentence on your own. In the "milestones" at the end of each unit (there are only 4 units per level), you take part in a conversation. Basically, it's a ten-minute thing where you see a whole string of pictures that all relate to each other, like in one story. Some of them have no text associated with them, for some of them you hear/see text, and for some of them you have to come up with the text on your own and say it in the microphone. It might say, for instance "Viste la boda?" and you say "Si, vi la boda." There is only one correct answer, which is annoying. For example, if you were to say "Si, la vi." that would be counted as incorrect, even though it is a more realistic response. Other times, you'll have to look ahead. Maybe you see a picture and it prompts you for text, and you see that the next picture has a man saying, "Si, gracias, quiero una camisa." You would have to say, "Quiere ud. una camisa?" or something like that. But that's only 40 minutes out of a 24-hour program. Overall, I like it much better than v2, but it's still not perfect. Also, it completely fails to teach important things (past perfect, for example) and only spends about five minutes on others (subjunctive, for instance, one of the most important Spanish constructs. There is maybe a total of 10 minutes on the subj. and that's it. Conditional/past subjunctive is even worse). But complex grammar has always been a problem with Rosetta Stone. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| AlexL Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7083 days ago 197 posts - 277 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Italian | Message 11 of 15 25 February 2008 at 5:11pm | IP Logged | ||
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By the way, their website says:
Rosetta Stone Version 3 will soon be released to the public in Chinese, along with Irish, Japanese and Hebrew. But I don't know how soon "soon" is, as this was posted on Jan. 29. However, the article said that some swimmers were already using the "soon-to-be-released" Chinese v3 (to prepare for Olympics), so I assume it's pretty much done. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| MerryHearted Diglot Newbie United States Joined 6746 days ago 22 posts - 23 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Spanish, Mandarin | Message 12 of 15 25 February 2008 at 10:26pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks Alex, it's great to hear from someone who has used the upper level of it.
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| Betjeman Groupie Germany Joined 6142 days ago 85 posts - 204 votes Speaks: German* | Message 13 of 15 26 February 2008 at 8:26am | IP Logged | ||
Yes, thanks Alex and thank you too, MerryHearted. So RS is getting better but still is a mixed bag, right? I have yet another question (I asked RS customer support about this two weeks ago but am still waiting for response): How do they handle licensing? As far as I know, you have to register online or via phone. What are they going to do if, for example, your computer breaks down and you have to replace it? Is it possible to renew the license or do you have to pay the full price for the program again? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| MerryHearted Diglot Newbie United States Joined 6746 days ago 22 posts - 23 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Spanish, Mandarin | Message 14 of 15 26 February 2008 at 10:20am | IP Logged | ||
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The v3 user guide says you contact RS Support and have them Deactivate the software if you want to move it from one computer to another, but that the process is permanent. i.e. once it is deactivated for a particular computer you cannot reinstall it on that computer.
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| tomispev Triglot Newbie YugoslaviaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5908 days ago 2 posts - 2 votes Speaks: Serbo-Croatian, Slovak*, English Studies: Japanese | Message 15 of 15 07 February 2010 at 1:52pm | IP Logged | ||
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I started learning Japanese with Version 3. It is undoubtedly far better than V2. One great improvement is that in the beginning they actually have lessons which teach you the script. For every lesson you can choose between romanization, a combination of hiragana and katakana, with kanji and with furigana. But you also have lessons where instead of pictures of people and objects you just have letters and you need to associate the right sound with the corresponding letter. So far it is only for hiragana, but maybe there will be for katakana and kanji (though I doubt about the latter).
Also, the Japanese lessons have couple of lessons that are taken from Japanese culture, like: "This man is writting in hiragana", "These men are writting in katakana", "This woman is writting in kanji". For example, when kids write something on the blackboard they write in a Japanese script, or newspapers are in Japanese, or just any picture where written text appears it is in Japanese. I do believe it is computer edited though, but you get the feeling of Japanese culture. Another things is that apparently most scenes with food feature sushi and rice. :-) 1 person has voted this message useful |
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