Thoughts on Rosetta Stone...

[Byss]

First time venturing in here. Essentially, I will be going into my senior year next year of highschool, and this previous year I took French I, and probably learned next to nothing, despite passing, paying attention, and me being at a magnet school in a special French language program. I got pronunciation down pretty well, which is all I really learned. Next year I'll be taking French II at a regular highschool.

But anyways, swim ended up pirating the first and second level of every Rosetta Stone language, and has it all burnt to DVD. He is wondering if it, that is, a language learning program like that, will greatly expand upon his skills or not. He is thinking about using it this summer to hopefully get better and not forget anything, but just doesn't want to waste his time.

So what are your personal feelings and experiences with Rosetta Stone, or similar language learning software? The advertisements say it is used by the US State Department and FBI, so it has to be pretty effective, right?

[shadow operative]

I've just started arabic with it but i can't really say as it's early days. So far it's pretty good in my opinion, it would probably be better to learn from a person but other than that it's good.

[Jive Talka]

I just took the online demo on Rosetta Stone and I have to say I agree with Shadow Operative, I much rather learn from a person than a progarm, but it will work for now.

[Waterwings]

I thought it was pretty good for listening for accents as it has different native speakers say the phrases. Doesn't teach you any grammar so you can get lost very quickly.
Program is absolutely not worth 200 or whatever they are charging.
There are much better resources for major languages but it works pretty good in my opinion for languages like vietnamese where resources are quite limited.

But on a side note my psych teacher said it may be pretty useful, learning a 2nd language happens in the right side of the brain, where also a lot of visual information is processed, so that may be why they chose to have you relate the words to images.

[Just Insane]

It is useful for starting a language because it exposes you to the accent and helps your listening skills. Also the way it teaches you is the way a child would learn there first language (theres a lot of trail and error) so it comes more natural.

There is not a huge need on memorizing everything, because it makes you use logic and reasoning to figure out what people are saying.

However eventually you are going to need an actual person to help you learn the language. There is no grammar explanation at all, which makes everything you learn matter-of-fact and inflexible.

It is a good start for a foreign language but even if you take all the lessons on it you will not become fluent unless you actually have someone to teach you all the grammar rules.

[poniti]

I've been wondering about Rosetta Stone too. Where did SWIY get the copies of the program?

[Waterwings]

demonoid