Hekje Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 4731 days ago 842 posts - 1330 votes Speaks: English*, Dutch Studies: French, Indonesian
| Message 97 of 109 21 June 2012 at 6:03pm | IP Logged |
Elexi wrote:
From what I understand from watching the French in Action reunion videos - some US
schools have sacked their elementary Spanish teachers and just stick the children in
front of Rosetta Stone. Can this be actually true or is it just hyperbole? |
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I have never heard of that happening anywhere. The vast majority of elementary schools don't even teach a foreign
language anyway.
ETA: Source is me having graduated from high school three years ago.
Edited by Hekje on 21 June 2012 at 6:04pm
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jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6937 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map
| Message 98 of 109 21 June 2012 at 7:54pm | IP Logged |
Contrary to what I and others think of the system (as being rather expensive compared to the content), none other than Patrick Hassel Zein (the man behind this website) is mentioned on the RS page with testimonials:
"(...)I've spent thousands of SEK on study material, courses and trips to the university in order to learn Chinese. If I'd discovered Rosetta Stone earlier, I would have saved both time and money!" (translation from Swedish)
Maybe he and others mentioned have really had a positive experience from RS (as a supplemental material or as beginners), but it probably says more about the kind of education they've had before that (in the particular language, or language studies in general). Enabling you to study "whenever you want" is nothing unique to RS.
By the way, I just can't believe that the Stockholm University is using RS (as stated in the ad banner) - they should know better. The Ministry for Foreign Affairs is also mentioned...
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Snowflake Senior Member United States Joined 5987 days ago 1032 posts - 1233 votes Studies: Mandarin
| Message 99 of 109 21 June 2012 at 8:54pm | IP Logged |
Elexi wrote:
From what I understand from watching the French in Action reunion videos - some US schools have sacked their elementary Spanish teachers and just stick the children in front of Rosetta Stone. Can this be actually true or is it just hyperbole? |
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I've read news articles about that occuring on the east coast....want to say NJ.
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sabotai Senior Member United States Joined 5910 days ago 391 posts - 489 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Japanese, Korean, French
| Message 100 of 109 21 June 2012 at 11:57pm | IP Logged |
Snowflake wrote:
Elexi wrote:
From what I understand from watching the French in Action reunion videos - some US schools have sacked their elementary Spanish teachers and just stick the children in front of Rosetta Stone. Can this be actually true or is it just hyperbole? |
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I've read news articles about that occuring on the east coast....want to say NJ. |
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Used my Google-fu to look this up and yes, it seems a few schools in NJ did this. Not because they thought RS was great, but because the downturn in the economy forced the schools to cut costs, and buying a computer and a copy of RS for every student in the class was cheaper than paying a handful of foreign language teachers.
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hobbitofny Senior Member United States Joined 6261 days ago 280 posts - 408 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Russian
| Message 101 of 109 22 June 2012 at 12:41am | IP Logged |
My step daughter (Russian speaker) is learning English at a local ESL course run by a not for profit group. They do one on one teaching 3 hour a week. They allow in off hours the use of their computers for to the students to learn with software. They have RS. I ask him about it when we signed her up for the course. They use it as a supplement or enrichment item. It is not their main program of study. I assume this would be true at other places. So when I read the list of places that use RS, I do not understand that RS is how all these groups teach language, but simply understand the group has it as a resource to help their students.
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Warp3 Senior Member United States forum_posts.asp?TID= Joined 5563 days ago 1419 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Korean, Japanese
| Message 102 of 109 22 June 2012 at 4:40am | IP Logged |
Elexi wrote:
From what I understand from watching the French in Action reunion videos - some US
schools have sacked their elementary Spanish teachers and just stick the children in
front of Rosetta Stone. Can this be actually true or is it just hyperbole? |
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My previous job was in the IT department at a local school system and I know they used Rosetta Stone in ESL classes in the elementary schools (since I distinctly recall installing it on computers in ESL classrooms). I don't recall hearing about any usage of it for the high school foreign language classes though.
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Yoyo2o Diglot Newbie United States Joined 4564 days ago 5 posts - 5 votes Speaks: Polish, English* Studies: Spanish
| Message 103 of 109 24 June 2012 at 10:38pm | IP Logged |
I'm sorry if this has been already asked but I wanted to know if Rosetta Stone does a good job of teaching someone
to speak Mandarin Chinese. Right now all I care about is learning to speak it fluently. Reading and writing are the
last things on my mind right now. So does RS do a good job of teaching you to speak?
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Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6625 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish
| Message 104 of 109 25 June 2012 at 2:01am | IP Logged |
Well, as far as I understand, RS teaches you the writing system as well and there's no way to opt out of that. So best use audio-only courses, such as Pimsleur (in the beginning) or Michel Thomas.
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