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Rosetta Stone revisited | ||
Tags: Rosetta Stone | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5216 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes  Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 1 of 51 25 April 2013 at 6:49pm | IP Logged | ||
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I know that Rosetta Stone has a terrible reputation around here. but yesterday I ran into a friend of mine who is learning Italian with the latest version called Rosetta Stone Totale. My friend was ecstatic about RS and claimed that it was the best thing she has ever used. And she and her husband are leaving for Italy in two weeks.
Now this person is a highly educated college graduated who knows a thing about language learning. Although I haven't investigated the whole thing further, I'm wondering if we should revisit our hitherto universal condemnation of RS. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| sehiralti Triglot Newbie Finland Joined 4543 days ago 15 posts - 27 votes Speaks: Turkish*, EnglishC2, German Studies: Swedish, Finnish | Message 2 of 51 25 April 2013 at 7:09pm | IP Logged | ||
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I don't think RS is as bad as most people say, but I don't think it's better than an equal amount of good classroom
learning either. The upside is you can do it whenever you want and however you want. It would not of course make anyone fluent but it can give a solid ground. Or at least it did for me. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| patrickwilken Senior Member Germany radiant-flux.net Joined 4319 days ago 1546 posts - 3200 votes Studies: German | Message 3 of 51 25 April 2013 at 7:41pm | IP Logged | ||
Can you quantify 'solid ground'? Would this be A2 equivalent? 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| jondesousa Tetraglot Senior Member United States goo.gl/Zgg3nRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6050 days ago 227 posts - 297 votes Speaks: English*, Portuguese, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Latin, Mandarin, Spanish | Message 4 of 51 25 April 2013 at 8:33pm | IP Logged | ||
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Are we really going to start this discussion again? It always leads down a bad path.
I think that Rosetta Stone is not the worst thing out there but if you look at the cost/benefit ratio it's pretty obvious that it is a ripoff. I could learn at least as much from all five levels of Rosetta stone (at $500) for less than $30 of Teach Yourself. Rosetta Stone spends a significant amount of money on marketing which leads unknowing consumers to believe it works but as with every RS thread on this forum, I have yet to hear of a person that has made significant progress in any language (even A2 level) after investing serious effort in it. Short of RS redesigning the program completely and improving the level of vocabulary and syntax covered it will not be a resource considered by most serious language learners. 8 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| sehiralti Triglot Newbie Finland Joined 4543 days ago 15 posts - 27 votes Speaks: Turkish*, EnglishC2, German Studies: Swedish, Finnish | Message 5 of 51 25 April 2013 at 8:38pm | IP Logged | ||
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I cannot really, as I don't really know what A2 exactly would be. Although some studies have described the first
three levels of RS as A2ish, in a way. I guess it's within that ballpark, at least for indo-european languages. I don't think it can hurt in anyway (apart from the wallet) and I don't think it's less effective than any other mainstream courses out there. If you like something interactive with a good study sequence where you don't have to deal with anything else, I'd say think about it. I really think it should be done as quickly as possible, though. I really don't understand the 6 month and 1 year deals on their website. I think it might be quite useless spread over a year. Edit: I didn't see the comments above when I started writing. There are many RS discussions out there online which lead to nowhere really. It's difficult to give people such guarantees online, I guess. RS does make impossible marketing claims and it is quite a commercial company of course. The only objective article I know about RS is this: http://www.sdkrashen.com/articles/Rosetta_Stone_Review_Krash en.pdf Furthermore, one can read the two articles on their website and then decide. Everything else written on forums cannot be more than opinions. Edited by sehiralti on 25 April 2013 at 8:58pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6383 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 6 of 51 25 April 2013 at 9:44pm | IP Logged | ||
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It's also "just an opinion" if I say you can't learn a language by learning the dictionary by heart, yet nobody would argue and demand proof for that here (hopefully).
Not a Benny fan but his review is very unbiased I would say. RS is little more than an expensive flashcard software. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| leroc Senior Member United States Joined 4097 days ago 114 posts - 167 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German | Message 7 of 51 25 April 2013 at 11:41pm | IP Logged | ||
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You could make your own Rosetta Stone V4 in about 10 or so hours of effort in PowerPoint or something equivalent. Find captivating and eye-pleasing images on the internet, have a translation of the image in X language and look for native speakers saying said phrase or single word (that one website that has a huge collection in tons of languages). Take the 'Ding-Ding' sound and make it play every time you get a problem correct, when you fail on the problem make the program go 'Nuh-uh'. After all this, go get a native speaker to discuss your lesson off of a site and do a language exchange and *bam*, Rosetta Stone for free but 10 times better.
2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| PillowRock Groupie United States Joined 4520 days ago 87 posts - 151 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 8 of 51 26 April 2013 at 1:07am | IP Logged | ||
From what I recall from reading that some time ago: Unbiased in terms of neither selling it nor bashing at the expense of something else, yes. However, his review was significantly biased in terms of seeing things in terms of his own established pattern of how and when he starts learning a language. He was starting his work with the course after he was already in the TL country. From everything that I've seen, very few people do it that way. Most would do that whole course (or at least a good percentage of it) before traveling to the target country. One of his main criticisms was about the order in which the material was presented, and was only valid if you were doing things Benny's way; if you were going to do the course before traveling, that would be a complete non-issue. I understand people complaining about it being overpriced. However, some of the complaining about RS, by itself without any further outside work, not getting you as proficient with in the language as the ads imply strikes me as being a little bit like complaining that a cologne doesn't immediately make hoards of super-models want to have sex with you like the ads imply. Frankly, regardless of the ads, it never occurred to me that any such self-study course would be that kind fluency-in-a-box. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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