Max101 Diglot Newbie United States Joined 4933 days ago 9 posts - 29 votes Speaks: English, Spanish* Studies: German, French, Russian
| Message 1 of 5 02 April 2013 at 3:17pm | IP Logged |
Hi everyone, looks like Live Mocha, a language learning site some people here in this forum have used has merged
with the notorious Rosetta Stone. I personally find this interesting as they both cater to a similar audience of people
who learn a new language from their computer and clicking at picture flashcards, etc. I know a large majority swear
by Assimil and other traditional language learning sources, what are you thoughts?
http://livemocha.com/blog/2013/04/02/a-letter-from-our-ceo-m ichael-schutzler-2/
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josht Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6242 days ago 635 posts - 857 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: French, Spanish, Russian, Dutch
| Message 2 of 5 02 April 2013 at 4:55pm | IP Logged |
Well, if nothing else, it will put a bunch of poor language learning resources all in one
basket, so as to be easier to avoid...
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Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6393 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 3 of 5 02 April 2013 at 6:32pm | IP Logged |
Well, that explains it... :/
I've heard the tutors were quite good. Now RS is killing the only good thing about livemocha
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tennisfan Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5156 days ago 130 posts - 247 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, Spanish Studies: German
| Message 4 of 5 02 April 2013 at 6:32pm | IP Logged |
josht wrote:
Well, if nothing else, it will put a bunch of poor language learning resources all in one
basket, so as to be easier to avoid... |
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Glad you said it first. :)
Rosetta Stone has set the bar quite high in the race for most useless language learning software ever to be created.
But Live Mocha has set the same standard in terms of internet resources.
Now they've joined forces. I can just see it now as I walk through the terminal at the airport: "Buy Rosetta Stone now, and we'll throw in a six month subscription to Live Mocha, free!"
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aokoye Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5337 days ago 235 posts - 453 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Dutch, Norwegian, Japanese
| Message 5 of 5 02 April 2013 at 8:58pm | IP Logged |
You beat me to the punch, though there is an interesting (and currently free) article
on the Wall Street Journal here: http://blogs.wsj.com/cio/2013/04/02/rosetta-stone-
acquires-livemocha-to-decipher-the-cloud/
What I was going to type prior to logging on to my Livemocha account: I honestly
am not a huge fan of Livemocha. Their teaching method reminds me a lot of Rosetta Stone
(which I really don't like) and it used to be that a lot of their recordings were not
of good quality. While I think it is wonderful to use recordings done by people who are
fluent/expert speakers in the language, I think that it is more important to check the
quality (specifically audio quality) of the recordings.
My other issue was that there weren't a lot of exercises that focused on anything other
than speaking and it was essentially a very truncated but free version of Rosetta Stone
but with the addition of grammar. That said they have a system in place that encourages
native/expert speakers of one or more languages correct audio recordings and writings
of the learners of those languages.
All that said, I think that the most important part of Livemocha is that most of the
content it is free. Cost is a very large barrier for a number of things for the vast
majority of people in the world and it only makes sense to me for someone to put food
before the cost books, courses, etc for language learning. Additionally Livemocha has
partnered with a number of libraries in the US to provide free premium (gold key)
memberships to their patrons.
After I looked at Livemocha again
So I looked at Livemocha's website this morning right after I started typing this and
it looks like they've updated some of their courses including French, German, Spanish
and Italian. These are titled as "Active [language]". Livemocha teamed up with Harper
Collins to make an online and interactive version their Active Language series. I
clicked around the Active Spanish course and all of the lessons include interactive
lessons (listening comprehension, grammar, reading). There are also writing prompts
that allow you to have your writing critiqued by a native/expert speaker.
All and all I really like the changes that have been made to the site with the
partnership with Harper Collins and am hoping that their acquisition by Rosetta Stone
doesn't muck up anything (though I'm sure there will be some changes).
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