Rosetta Stone: Good and Bad

by Jeremy Harris
(California)

I first heard of Rosetta Stone from all the commercials I have seen everywhere. I knew that my mom wanted to learn French and I German. I was hesitant to request to buy it because of the fact that it was OVERLY advertised which usually means that it is a poor product. We bought it anyway, and at first I thought it was very easy to learn the language. I was on a roll until they were introducing sentences with certain grammar rules that they don't even think of explaining. So, while your confused on how they are using "ma" in one sentence for one word and "mon" in a different sentence for the same word, you get almost EVERY QUESTION WRONG!! The thing I don't like about is that they expect you to understand it without ANY explanation. So now I come to my conclusion, It is useless to even purchase ANY language learning software because you don't get a full learning experience. In my opinion, it is best to learn the language from a teacher who speaks the native language. Overall, Rosetta Stone is just ok if you want to get started learning a language.

Comments for Rosetta Stone: Good and Bad

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On the contrary, you've missed the very point.
by: David

Well you aren't expected to just know what the difference is off the bat. The point of the program is, just like when you first learned your native language, you had to use visual cues and intuition in a guess-and-test manner until you figured it out on your own. If you had read the intro to the program, it even explains why the program is set up in this way.

You don't learn from someone giving you all the answers to the test. Since the program doesn't require any sort of studying outside of the program itself, using your own intuition is really the only way the conjugation and such is going to stick in your mind. Sometimes that frustration from it is the very thing that makes you end up learning it...that frustration from trying to figure it out is now stuck in your head, and next time it won't be as hard to figure out, and then a little easier the following time, etc. I mean, after seeing so many verbs ending with "n" on the program with plural nouns, how could you not figure that out after about the 3rd time?

You can't learn a language without effort. Rosetta Stone is just trying to help people do that with as little effort as possible.
A few Tips
by: Anonymous

You are correct. Rosetta Stone can speak to you as THEY say it does, the way we learned as kids. But as children we not only weren't taught from a teacher and books with exercises but we WERE corrected by someone when we said things wrong or were answered if curious of a difference. You can't get corrected or ask questions to Rosetta Stone. In my own experience from two semesters of German at college, I have learned MORE from About.com, youtube (watching actual germans speak and interact), Rosetta Stone, and also german-flashcards.com, than I did from both semesters at college. But I think that it helped to learn it because I had the basis of a teachers explanation of sentence structure and such. With that alone I was just confused and didn't care why the sentence was made that way, I just wanted to learn sentences of my choice and use them. Two different teachers who weren't native and both spoke it differently, that was annoying. So watching native speakers and hearing them on the flashcard website and youtube, then having access to so much info on about.com, things all connected and with all of it COMBINED, I have really started picking things up and can speak it well and understand it well. So there is NO program ALONE that will teach you well, it is a combination with as much native and visiting the country as you can.
Hope that made sense :) Good Luck!

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