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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| AlexL Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7086 days ago 197 posts - 277 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Italian | Message 17 of 34 01 July 2008 at 4:57pm | IP Logged | |||||
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The point of RS is not to translate. The sentences used in RS are how a native speaker would most likely
describe the photo: "He is running," for instance, would be the English phrase. The uses of the tenses might be different in another language, though, and "he is running" may not have an equivalent or have an awkward equivalent. In order to show tenses, RS has a number of techniques. For the past tense, RS shows you a picture of a boy who has eaten chocolate and says "The boy ate the chocolate". Is this clear enough on its own? You COULD say, oh, this could mean "the boy is full" or "the boy already ate the chocolate" or "the boy wants more chocolate" or "the boy has eaten the chocolate and now is happy" or all sorts of things that could be inferred from the image. However, because you already know the words for "the boy" and "the chocolate" and recognize that "ate" is similar to "eat" (in most languages), you can probably understand what the language is saying. It is only at the VERY beginning that you need to rely completely on the pictures to tell you what a phrase means. (And when learning new nouns/adjectives). After that, RS assumes you can make some inferences on your own. There is one picture of a boy and his grandparents. They are holding a picture. Near the beginning of the course, we hear "the boy is with his grandparents" or something like that. You know the words "the boy," "is," and "grandparents" so through multiple examples you understand the word "with". Then, later on, we see the same picture, this time with a speech bubble coming from the boy. "You used to be young! Now you are old." Obviously, the picture could mean ALL SORTS OF things. But based on what you've already learned, it's easy to tell what the correct interpretation is. Edited by AlexL on 01 July 2008 at 4:58pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| freddyb45 Newbie United Kingdom Joined 5978 days ago 2 posts - 2 votes | Message 19 of 34 15 July 2008 at 3:47am | IP Logged | |||||
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Has anyone tried to learn Spanish with Rosetta Stone? I'm planning for retirement by getting a couple of new languages under my belt, as I hope to travel around Europe with my wife.
Would anyone recommend their service? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Casey Newbie United States Joined 6615 days ago 26 posts - 28 votes Speaks: English* | Message 20 of 34 25 July 2008 at 3:45pm | IP Logged | |||||
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. Edited by Casey on 12 August 2008 at 9:08am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| TerryW Senior Member United States Joined 6359 days ago 370 posts - 783 votes Speaks: English* | Message 21 of 34 25 July 2008 at 4:47pm | IP Logged | |||||
From what I understand, the CIA uses it for password encoding. If you knock on the door 2 times slowly then 3 times quickly, and say "The woman is on the horse; the boy is under the tractor," you will gain admittance. Just a couple months ago, a woman in my department at work, who has no idea I study languages for fun, confided in me that she bought Rosetta Stone Spanish a long time ago, but has yet to use it because she's so busy. She said, "It was pretty expensive, but I know it's the best." She must "know" that from the advertising. I'm constantly hearing RS commercials on the radio. Can't say that I ever heard a commercial for Assimil (not widely distributed in the U.S. for some reason), or Michel T., or obviously for FSI ("The most tedious way to learn a language, guaranteed!"). * I bet most people buying any language course hardly ever get past the first lesson. They're taking a trip to another country and think it will be fun to learn a language. When they see that they actually have to put in some effort to learn to say more than "Hello, goodbye, please and thank you" and count to 10, they set it aside and say "Maybe I'll pick this up again later." Possibly the "fun" element of the RS picture-quiz method keeps them amused a bit longer, but I'm sure there are many unused copies of RS sitting on the shelf like most other courses. Edit: *I have to correct myself. I've often seen magazine ads for commercial versions of FSI. Instead of "Learn as a child does," they always say "Learn as a diplomat does." Edited by TerryW on 25 July 2008 at 4:54pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6013 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 22 of 34 26 July 2008 at 8:22am | IP Logged | |||||
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Aside from the moronic picture book thing, I don't think Rosetta Stone's weaknesses are any way unique to it.
Popular phrase books long had the problem of working to a formula -- what the publisher wanted in every language. Many newer phrase books (eg Lonely Planet) are of a vastly superior quality, having been written from the ground up by a named expert. Sadly, the software producers seem to have reverted to formula writing. There are some specialist software packages written from the ground up for a certain language (download "Slime Forest" if you want to experience effective e-learning) but when the package is part of a series, you never get a named author. Someone has been given a list of boxes and filled them in as best they can. For example, Eurotalk's Talk Now! I tried this out in Kannada (a South Indian language). It included things like "hospital" and "taxi", which are both borrowed straight from English. Waste of time. It also had "yes" and "no", but I later found out that Kannada has two words for no -- one to deny/refute and one to decline/refuse. Again, it had a scatter-gun approach to numbers and the patterns were not readily apparent. I've also tried Linguashop/Cambridge Educational's TeachMe! series, this time for Scottish Gaelic. Again, formulaic. They had decided to make the first grammar lesson more useful by teaching adjectives and greetings in one. So the prompts were "good morning", "good afternoon", "good evening", "good night", "good luck". All well and good, but these are idiomatic expressions. So while most translated fine -- madainn mhath, feasgar math, feasgar math, oidhche mhath -- good luck didn't fit the intended pattern: "Gura math a theid leat" (there's no word there for luck -- it literally means "that good goes with you" -- and the adjective is now ruled by a verb rather than a noun). The problem that computer-based language learning has is that producing customised stuff is more expensive than formulaic stuff so it's difficult to break the product with a decent product as your competitors will have economy of scale on their side. Plus everyone likes a familiar name -- the more languages you have, the more shelf-space you have. The more shelf-space you have, the bigger the brand. I'm also planning to work on some new language software, but I'm not willing to give any hints out just now.... 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Casey Newbie United States Joined 6615 days ago 26 posts - 28 votes Speaks: English* | Message 23 of 34 28 July 2008 at 12:30pm | IP Logged | |||||
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. Edited by Casey on 12 August 2008 at 9:08am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6013 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 24 of 34 28 July 2008 at 12:44pm | IP Logged | |||||
A lot of the other software titles I've seen seem to be structured around the Romance languages -- it looks like most software written in Europe is written with French in mind. Not that this is very useful -- I've only bought software for less commonly studied languages, because the printed/audio material isn't there and some of the printed/audio material for the common languages is better than this computer rubbish.
I think the phrase you're looking for is totally ****ing pointless! 1 person has voted this message useful |
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