February 3, 2012
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You may have heard a lot about Rosetta Stone Language learning and may have wondered, does Rosetta Stone work? Even if you have a difficult time learning new things, or grasping new concepts there is no doubt that if you apply yourself you can absolutely learn a language with this amazing program. How does Rosetta Stone work? You sign up for the site, pay a fee, and then choose the language that you want to learn from a selection of over 29 different languages. Each language is broken up into many different sections or modules. You can proceed at a comfortable pace, learning as much as you would like to in one sitting, or slowing down to repeat the module as much as you need to. The entire process is entirely up to you. You are immersed immediately in the language that you are learning, with no guidance in your native language. This "direct immersion" method assures that you will begin to learn immediately. You begin with the very basics and then move on to more complicated language structure. First, you learn simple phrases and then you learn to ask questions such as "what time is it" "which way to ___", "where is the bathroom", "do you know a good restaurant for dinner", you get the idea. If you were travelling to a foreign country on vacation, it is always a great idea to try to learn some of the language. This program has a variety of ways in which you can learn the language, including audio and visual tools. It utilizes difficulty levels, starting from level 1, level 2, etc. (where you pay for each level), so that the student progresses in order to teach vocabulary and grammer, without the need for translation. Rosetta Stone builds your language learning by reinforcing previous lessons and incorporating terms and phrases from one lesson to the next. The sequence of activities that you will work through will give you a good solid foundation in your learning and helps you to progress naturally through basics into more complicated conversational skills. If you have ever wondered how does Rosetta Stone work, then you may already have an idea from what we have told you so far. As you work through the increasingly difficult levels, you will find that you start to grasp the language more than you had expected. This direct immersion into the language is the best way to learn something new, and you will definitely learn much more quickly than if you read a book and try to pick up a new language with translation and memorization drills.
Most helpful customer reviews 279 of 289 people found the following review helpful.
48 of 49 people found the following review helpful. 60 of 64 people found the following review helpful. From my own experience, I can truly say that I completely wasted my time and money with Rosetta Stone. After a YEAR of completing Levels 1 through 3 I felt hopeless--BUT I ran into some great advice: learn from audio tapes. With audio tapes, my speaking and listening ability improved DRASTICALLY in a month. Within 3 months of using audio tape materials I started DREAMING in Mandarin! So far I've used all of Pimsleur Mandarin 1-3, and I am currently studying from New Practical Chinese Reader and the Foreign Service Institute's "Standard Chinese". I hear from many people who have learned to speak FLUENT Mandarin that these are the best choices. Don't make the same mistake as I did! I was about to give this a 2-star rating because the application is entertaining to use, but unfortunately that entertainment really didn't get me anywhere--or other people I have talked with. Also I thought, "but wait, this company LIES in its advertising just to make the product sound great. I'll definitely give this product a 1." If I could, I would rate RS Mandarin 0 stars because it truly deserves it. *sigh* The good thing about Rosetta Stone: I studied a new version's levels 1 through 3. It took me a year, but I learned a lot of vocabulary. Actually, I forgot a lot of that vocabulary because Rosetta Stone did NOT improve my speaking OR listening ability. Since RS gave me few sentences to speak the vocabulary, I eventually forgot the vocab that didn't make it to my long term memory pool. It turns out that learning vocabulary is completely useless for a Chinese language--you need to learn how to speak in context. Rosetta Stone does have an option where you can speak into the microphone; however, the problem is you barely have any speaking practice. Also, you only hear 2 natives (a male and female) speaking at a slow, non-native pace. This does NOT help with your listening ability, especially since the speakers have a Taiwanese accent. This won't help you if you're planning on going to China--where most people speak Mandarin! However, the constant slow-paced speaking should help with pronunciation... but your listening skills will suffer. Even as I am at a more advanced level, I do not waste my time with Rosetta Stone. RS was not only the most expensive option, but it was also by far the least efficient. |
Great Marketing Department, Terrible Language ProgramFiled under Software by on Feb 3rd, 2012. 
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