<p>Can anybody share their experience with Rosetta Stone? Is it worth the price? Is it engaging enough to make you stick with it? Can you really learn to speak, read and write a useful amount of a new language? How many of the sections would you purchase up front?</p>
<p>I’m considering using it to learn a language for which I have almost no prior knowledge (not to replace an academic course, but for travel abroad).</p>
<p>Using any kind of learning package (Rosetta Stone is only one and by far not the best) will not help you learn a language unless a) you have had some prior language learning experience and b) you are highly motivated. Think of it like learning to play a musical instrument. If you have no musical background, the chances of you being able to pick up an instrument and with a self-study program learn it by yourself are pretty minimal. Frankly, if it’s a common language, there’s probably a free Web site out there where you will do just as well.</p>
<p>I like rosetta stone. I have been using it for french, and although I am only on the first disc I feel like I have learned a lot. It is especially impressive how well it teaches pronunciation, which is obviously extremely important. It does take a great deal of dedication, as nobody is sitting you down and forcing you, or giving you a grade, but that is true of any program. I find that learning is gratifying enough in itself. Basically before you spend the money, the question I think you need to ask yourself is if you will stick with it. If the answer is yes (most days, for at least half an hour) then I say go for it!</p>
<p>I would recommend using Live Mocha before purchasing Rosetta Stone. It’s similar in some respects, but it’s free and you can get feedback from native speakers (your results may vary for this).</p>
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<p>Yes, I’ve seen the Rosetta Stone. It’s in the British Museum - one of the best museums in the world and certainly worth the admission price…Oops!</p>
<p>One of my kids used Rosetta Stone with no prior foreign language experience. I was surprised how quickly she learned from it. The impressive thing is how it has alot of variety, and focuses on groups of words at a time. So for learning ‘boy,’ boys,’ ‘girl,’ etc etc, they’ll use pictures and use matching games. You do it with reading the word, then listening to the word in another game, then having to say it (with a mic, so it assesses your pronounciation), then having to type the word out. But, like any other self-study course, you have to have the motivation to continue.</p>
<p>Yes, used it. No, not worth the price. I thought it was all hype and marketing ad nausium. Sure, it makes sense to learn a language like you learned your first language, but they don’t do that any differently than other programs. In fact, the visuals and sentences are so predictable it’s a waste of time. </p>
<p>Their real difference is their aggressive tactics to get you hooked and their outrageous fees. (I don’t know about you, but the “counselor” kept adding more and more to what I needed and she promised it was all returnable for free.) BTW, it’s very difficult to get reimbursed too. Notice, they don’t supply any return addresses, on their website or their mailings. </p>
<p>My husband has used audio tapes he got from our library and he is learning Chinese.</p>
<p>I tried the sample & bought one from Costco. For some reason, the disk I bought did match the appropriate word to the picture, so I didn’t think highly of it & returned the product. My sister & BIL bought it in Mandarin & are trying to learn it. BIL has a masters in Japanese, so believe he can pick up languages easily–have not heard back from either of them what they think of it.</p>
<p>I’ve tried Rosetta Stone, and as a homeschooler I know of many other families whose children have used it.</p>
<p>No one found that they or their child learned a language from Rosetta Stone. It’s presented as a way adults can learn a second language without working hard-- just sit down at the computer, look at some pictures, then say a few things, wow, it’s like a video game.</p>
<p>That’s just not the way adults learn a second language. It doesn’t work. To learn a second language you have to work at it. You have to practice, you have to try to form novel sentences, you have to explicitly work with the new grammatical structures.</p>
<p>Rosetta Stone might be a way to learn new vocabulary, but vocabulary is only a minor part of learning a new language.</p>
<p>I agree with Cardinal - my company has been throwing Rosetta Stone at us to learn the native language of the company that purchased us. I see those who have had no experience with the language struggle, and I have learned so much more by just practicing with the native employees on my floor. I have always been able to read in the language quite well, it is the conversing practice that I needed.</p>
<p>My daughter is using a program called Hola, Que Tal to prepare for a summer in Spain - more geared toward the every day conversational than the stuffy business language.</p>
<p>Now our local PBS station broadcasts two shows, structured like soap operas, that are geared toward this language comprehension practice, one for Spanish and one for French. Might be something to look for if you are going to travel.</p>
<p>I used to work for Rosetta Stone and I don’t think it works. Of course, this was several years ago. I understand that they have a new product which allows for more interaction between learners under the tutelage of a native speaker. I still don’t think the deficiencies in grammar have been addressed.</p>
<p>One can also watch movies with subtitles in English or the language you are trying to learn as a supplement. I have heard some folks have gotten a lot of reinforcement that way. Of course, there is nothing like conversing with native speakers to increase your ability in a language.</p>
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<p>… if you’re four years old. But if you’re an adult, no, it doesn’t make sense to try to learn a language like you learned your mother tongue. Because you can’t. That ability shuts down around puberty.</p>
<p>Not to mention the fact that using Rosetta Stone is nothing like a child learning a first language. Children learn language when language is specifically directed at them by their caregivers. Parents and others specifically talk to babies, in simplified language. Babies won’t learn a language if, for example, no one ever talks to them but the TV is on 24/7. They learn a language because others around them are trying to communicate with them, and they are trying to communicate with others.</p>
<p>Cardinal Fang -</p>
<p>Actually there is a great deal of debate in the language teaching business about whether or not the language-learning facility does change with age, and if so, just exactly why and how. What is clear, is that a learner’s emotional relationship with learning, and with language learning in particular, will affect his/her ability to master the subject matter. Full disclaimer here, I teach English at Berlitz, so I do have a certain bias. </p>
<p>Any language-teaching methodology that takes advantage of the natural ways in which we master language skills will seem relatively painless to the students. Yes, you do have to work at it, and yes you have to try out new ways to express yourself, but if your learning process makes you feel like your brains are bleeding, you are probably working against your own natural language facilities. From what I have read about it, Rosetta Stone is based on current understanding of human language learning processes. Whether it will feed enough of the new language into an individual student’s brain at a rate that is appropriate for that particular student is another thing entirely.</p>
<p>In addition, language is meant for human-human communication. Working with a set of tapes, a video, or a textbook without actually trying things out on another human being does have its limitations. Rosetta Stone does offer some live virtual classrooms (so does Berlitz for certain languages), that may provide the kind of human-human interaction necessary for mastery of new language skills.</p>
<p>All of that said, if your goal is to pick up a few words and phrases so that you can handle basic survival-level communication before a vacation, whatever class or tape or video or even print-only material you can work with is a good idea. Even wandering around that country with a phrase-book in your pocket can make all the difference in the kind of adventures that you will be able to have.</p>
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<p>We do know, however, that very few adult language learners reach native or near-native fluency, even after a long time trying to learn and even when they are very motivated, but many young children who learn a second language reach native fluency. So something is changing.</p>
<p>I’m taking Tamil this summer. Five days a week, 6 hours a day. Individual tutors. For 6 weeks. going to cost me $300.</p>
<p>Of course, I’ll be in Tamil Nadu.</p>
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Actually there is research evidence that adults can attain fluency, and they actually will learn at a faster rate than children – but they very rarely can gain the ability to speak without an accent. The facility that is lost in early childhood is the ability to hear the precise sounds of different languages.</p>
<p>But this research has been done in an immersion, participatory setting. One key seems to be connecting physical actions to relevant language, or at least using the language in a purposeful fashion. Something along the lines of: if you need to communicate something important to you, or if you have a real need to understand what is being said to you, you’ll remember. But it’s hard to replicate that setting with a computer program, or listening to audiotapes, or even in a participatory class practicing in artificial situations. I mean, there is a big difference between saying the phrase “here is my luggage” in response to a an audiotape cue on a learning language tape for travelers, and saying the phrase, “where’s my luggage? I’ve lost my luggage! I can’t find my luggage!” when you are standing in a strange airport distraught because you’ve arrived somewhere and your luggage hasn’t. There is an emotional factor that is an important component to learning a language that may be hard to replicate on the computer. On the other hand, that’s why it tends to be particularly easy for adults to learn curse words in other languages.</p>
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<p>From what I’ve read, the ability to learn a new language and end up with no accent is lost in most people around age 15.</p>
<p>coureur,</p>
<p>There are some really nifty studies with babies that indicate that we know the sounds of our home language by 6 months of age, and that our brains are already beginning to tune out sounds and rhythm patterns that aren’t part of that language. Generally speaking, the older we get, the harder it is for us to turn that facility back on. Certain sounds that are considered to be “the same” will be very difficult for us to separate into two separate sounds if we are learning a new language that makes that distinction. For example, most native-Japanese speakers who are learning English can master the creation of the two distinct sounds represented by R and L. However, their brains cannot distinguish between those two sounds when they hear them. I don’t have the reference handy for you, but again there are some nifty articles on that topic with brain scan results for native speakers of various languages and various different word sounds.</p>
<p>As always, there are a few outliers who carry this infant-like facility for sounds into later stages of life, and who can acquire near-native pronunciation skills. It is one of the great pleasures of teaching language to see who learns what when. It is like doing brain research every day!</p>
<p>Look into Pimsleur–expensive, but your library might have it. In a month or so, I went from zero French to being able to communicate in a very rudimentary way and understand announcements in the train station just by listening to the tapes in the car when I was driving to work. I thought it was very well designed to get you to put sentences together, and with just the right amount of review. I don’t think this would ever teach anyone to speak well, but the payoff for effort ratio was very good–the French I managed to learn improved my life a lot during my stay in France.</p>