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Rosetta Stone revisited | ||
Tags: Rosetta Stone | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| 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 9 of 51 26 April 2013 at 2:09am | IP Logged | ||
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(But short skirts attract rapists as easily as claimed? nevermind, just tired of the male domination here)
The thing is that by itself it gets you pretty much nowhere. Any progress will be due to other things you do, so why not just dump RS? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5058 days ago 2237 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 10 of 51 26 April 2013 at 2:20am | IP Logged | ||
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Everybody, including a lot of HTLAL members, want something that is "out of the box" ready. HTLAL members know that there are more cost efficient "out of the box ready" solutions for language learning. They know that memrise and anki are free. They know that free options exist to learn a heck of a lot of languages and that they don't need computer software to tell them that their pronunciation is adequate- that's what humans are for. The general English-speaking public doesn't know this. To these folks, RS is the way to go based on their marketing. Assimil, FSI and Teach Yourself aren't advertising on CNN.
I say if someone wants to use RS to learn a language, then go right ahead. Spend that money. I'd love to see a genuine success story, but I think we're unlikely to anytime soon. The general lack of unbiased testimonials, success posts, youtube videos, polyglot recommendations, etc. seems to support the general forum consensus. Even if it did work, I wouldn't recommend it because of the outrageous pricing and slick marketing, that's capitalism for you. Even if it was $200 cheaper, or free, I couldn't in all good conscience, recommend it when other, better, tried and true alternatives exist. Edited by iguanamon on 26 April 2013 at 2:23am 9 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| 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 11 of 51 26 April 2013 at 3:11am | IP Logged | ||
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5226 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 12 of 51 26 April 2013 at 7:13am | IP Logged | ||
I basically agree with this post. I would even add that the lack of true success stories, youtube videos, etc. exist for all the self-study products out there. This is why I was so taken aback by this rounding endorsement of RS from someone whose judgment I respect. I should add that the feature that she really liked was the online classes with a native speaker. This what seemed to make the big difference. It would seem then that a fair number of people do like RS. I even know of entire school systems that use it. The marketing may be slick and the pricing outrageous, but you can't fool all the people all the time. Enough people must find the product useful. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| 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 13 of 51 26 April 2013 at 10:50am | IP Logged | ||
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It seems to me that RS is good at giving you an impression of progress. The only thing it does better than Assimil, which is a far more realistic representation of language learning as a whole.
5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| mike245 Triglot Senior Member Hong Kong Joined 6768 days ago 303 posts - 408 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Cantonese Studies: French, German, Mandarin, Khmer | Message 14 of 51 26 April 2013 at 11:01am | IP Logged | ||
Do you happen to know how well she has actually learned Italian? And what is her prior background with self-taught languages? 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5328 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 15 of 51 26 April 2013 at 1:29pm | IP Logged | ||
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It's not the price of Rosetta Stone that bothers me. Consider the math: If you earn the US minimum wage of $7.25/hour and you spend, say, 250 hours to reach a basic conversational level, that's $1,812.50 worth of time. If you earn more and you want to reach advanced fluency, you might end up investing tens of thousands of dollars worth of your time.
There are customers out there who spend $8,000 to $10,000 on Middlebury Language School, and they seem pretty pleased about the results. (Middlebury is a typical competent language school, with a twist: They expel you for using English.) And even if you just use native materials and occasionally talk with a tutor, the price can add up quickly. Sure, you absolutely can learn a language for free. However, some people have limited time but sufficient money, and they'd be happy to spend money to save time. The full Rosetta Stone seems to be available for about $500. If Rosetta Stone had a good track record, or offered some special convenience to a particular group of well-off users, I wouldn't be upset by the price. My problem is a bit simpler: I personally know some smart and disciplined people who have used Rosetta Stone, people who could have succeeded with Assimil (or Pimsleur, or FIA), and none of them ever got near A2 despite putting in an honest effort. This is actually a bit bizarre: It's not that hard to make a halfway decent language course, one which gets any reasonably persistent student to a serviceable level. And since Rosetta Stone sells an enormous number of copies, it shouldn't be hard to find people who have succeeded with Rosetta Stone. But the reality is that I go to French Meetups, I go to events at the Alliance Française, I visit Montreal, and I hang around on online language forums. I ask English speakers how they learned French. And I've never had a real conversation in French with somebody who loved Rosetta Stone. On the other hand, I really do find plenty of people who successfully learned French in school classes. (Some of them later moved to France for a while and reached C1/C2 levels.) So if I combine the cost and the massive popularity of Rosetta Stone with the virtual non-existence of conversational French speakers who have used it, something doesn't add up. So far, I've heard of a tiny handful of people here at HTLAL who like it as a supplement, plus the couple mentioned by s_allard, and a very few customers at Schoenhof's who apparently used it to reach a decent level. To me, this suggests that Rosetta Stone might be of use to some people (just like any halfway decent course), but that either (1) it attracts a hugely disproportionate number of students who don't put in an effort, or (2) most students who buy it will fail. And that's not OK for a $500 course. The only reason Middlebury's $8,000 tuition is even remotely justifiable is that virtually all of their students make significant progress, and that's worth $8,000 to certain people. (For that matter, I once met a retired software CEO who offered to give a French professor an expensive sports car in exchange for getting him to a basic conversational level in French. He would have been a happy man to pay that price.) So, in my opinion: Charging $500 is one thing if a course actually gets results. But it's a lot of money for a course with a worse-than-average success rate, especially when many fine courses are available for less. Edited by emk on 26 April 2013 at 1:35pm 13 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5226 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 16 of 51 26 April 2013 at 2:14pm | IP Logged | ||
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Far from me to defend Rosetta Stone, a product that I have never used. But I do think that much of the criticism that @emk makes can be applied to basically all self-teaching products in terms of ultimate attainment. I'm not sure that RS has a worse than average success rate. The big difference is that RS is relatively expensive.
Although $500 seems like a lot of money, it's not that much when you think of the overall costs of learning a language. (I'm not saying that RS is worth the price.) If you have $10,000 to spare, I think Middllebury or a month of in-country immersion and private instruction are the way to go. I personally recommend that most beginners take a language class rather than try to do it on their own. But many people want the convenience of studying at home and at their own pace. Whether you borrow a book from the library or buy RS, your chances of learning to really speak are frankly quite remote. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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