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Rosetta Stone any good?

  Tags: Rosetta Stone
 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes Post Reply
22 messages over 3 pages: 1 2 3  Next >>
circles
Newbie
United States
Joined 4425 days ago

2 posts - 2 votes

 
 Message 1 of 22
07 April 2012 at 7:56pm | IP Logged 
Amazon has 20% off Rosetta Stone.

I always see their commercials but thought it was expensive.
I am tempted to give it a try with the sale but is it worth it?
Is Rosetta Stone a good tool?

Rosetta Stone

Edited by circles on 07 April 2012 at 8:12pm

1 person has voted this message useful





emk
Diglot
Moderator
United States
Joined 5343 days ago

2615 posts - 8806 votes 
Speaks: English*, FrenchB2
Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian
Personal Language Map

 
 Message 2 of 22
07 April 2012 at 9:21pm | IP Logged 
Around here, the favorite courses seem to be (in no particular order) Assimil, FSI,
Pimsleur and Michel Thomas. The FSI courses are available for free, and Assimil is
sometimes available for under $50:

Assimil

You can find lots of people around here who've used these courses successfully. As for
Rosetta Stone, I would have two concerns: (1) I've heard only a tiny number of success
stories relative to their huge marketing budget, and (2) there are extremely good courses
available for a lot less money. But maybe somebody who's used Rosetta Stone v3 could tell
you more.
1 person has voted this message useful



egill
Diglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5507 days ago

418 posts - 791 votes 
Speaks: Mandarin, English*
Studies: German, Spanish, Dutch

 
 Message 3 of 22
07 April 2012 at 10:18pm | IP Logged 
No.
5 persons have voted this message useful



Cavesa
Triglot
Senior Member
Czech Republic
Joined 4820 days ago

3277 posts - 6779 votes 
Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1
Studies: Spanish, German, Italian

 
 Message 4 of 22
07 April 2012 at 11:11pm | IP Logged 
If you explore the search function of the forum, you'll find many juicy threads about
this. The "take home message" of most is:

Rosseta Stone won't teach you much and it certainly won't bring you to the high level
they claim. It may teach you some vocabulary but there are much cheaper (or free) ways
to achieve that. The idea behind it sounds good (and is a wonderful topic for
advertisements) but it brings more bad than good.

If you look around here a bit, you will find many better alternatives for whichever
language you may desire to learn. I'd advice you to get a real course (such as Assimil
and FSI), a grammar book, perhaps a vocabulary book for the first 5000 or so words and
a lot of fun material to supplement it all and develop your listening and reading
comprehension (podcasts and graded readers in the beginnings,
movies/books/radio/anything else later). :-)
3 persons have voted this message useful



translator2
Senior Member
United States
Joined 6730 days ago

848 posts - 1862 votes 
Speaks: English*

 
 Message 5 of 22
08 April 2012 at 1:57am | IP Logged 
The problem I had with Rosetta Stone was that they used the same interface for all the languages. Learning, "the boy", "the milk" and then "the boy drinks the milk" might work for Spanish or French, but when you have an inflected language like Russian, you can get lost with all the endings.

Or does the new incarnation of RS include some basic grammar lessons specific to each particular language?

I thought I read somewhere where you could pay a monthly fee and have access to all of their language programs.

Edited by translator2 on 08 April 2012 at 3:20am

1 person has voted this message useful



circles
Newbie
United States
Joined 4425 days ago

2 posts - 2 votes

 
 Message 6 of 22
08 April 2012 at 4:55am | IP Logged 
Thank you all for the replies.

I'll look into the other programs you suggested
1 person has voted this message useful



joesoefkalla
Newbie
Indonesia
Joined 4523 days ago

22 posts - 22 votes
Studies: English

 
 Message 7 of 22
08 April 2012 at 9:15pm | IP Logged 
translator2 wrote:

I thought I read somewhere where you could pay a monthly fee and have access to all of their language programs.


Incorrect. The online subscription will only give you the language(s) that you choose to pay for.
1 person has voted this message useful



Necronos
Newbie
United States
Joined 4440 days ago

37 posts - 41 votes
Speaks: English*
Studies: Spanish

 
 Message 8 of 22
09 April 2012 at 5:46am | IP Logged 
I've been using RS Spanish V3 for the last week or so. I borrowed it from another
person so I haven't paid for it, nor would I. It offers a decent secondary source of
instruction for me at the moment but that is mainly due to the novelty of the program.
I'm already beginning to find some of the exercises a bit tedious so I'm not sure how
much longer I'll continue to use the program.

I don't see how anyone could use RS to take them from basic to advanced fluency. I
doubt it is possible, and for the price tag of the program it should be more than just
possible.

Due to the novel experience of RS I have spent more time with it than with Pimsleur
(which is my primary source of instruction). I'd estimate that I have easily spent
twice as much time with Rosetta Stone than Pimsleur. Pimsleur, however, has offered me
more in regards to communicating with others than RS has.


2 persons have voted this message useful



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