Just bought Rosetta Stone French... any advice/stories from the good people of OOT?

I was interested in buying the French and the Russian Stones. A review down the line would be great. Also, how much did you spend?

Sure, I will keep anyone who is interested updated as to how I am finding it.

I spent £250 on the 3 Levels, but that was actually reduced from £350.

£250 is still a little steep imo, but I have heard good things and when compared to a private tutor it isn't too bad.

geez that's a lot to pay (although doesn't surprise me....I had heard in the $400 range for that stuff). I'm just curious if Rosetta is really THAT much better or THAT different from other CD's and computer interactive language tutor things. There are much cheaper options which I assume are just knock-off versions of Rosetta does. I just don't know how much worse they are.


Kind of funny story: I was playing with the accent thingee on one of the CD-ROMs on one of the spanish lessons (knock-off version...not Rosetta). When I said some basic spanish phrase like "buenos dias" into the microphone in a stupidly exaggerated redneck/southern-drawl/hillbilly way it gave me one of my best ratings and near "perfect native speaker" on the little meter thingee.

When my girlfriend, who is from South America and whose first language is Spanish, read some of the phrases she did not score in 'native speaker' on the thing although to be fair, her country's accent is known to be pretty different compared to more common accents like Spain or Mexico or the Caribbean.

But it was still weird and kind of funny. The only reason I did the hillbilly "bwee-nohss dee-azz" was to see how low I could score...so "near-perfect native" had me not feeling so bad about my previously mediocre accent ratings.

Bonne chance avec vos etudes.

Something I came across recently for foreign language study is livemocha.com. It's sort of a language learning site combined with social networking. It's free for the basic lessons, and it seems like it could come in handy when you want to find people to chat with in the language of interest.

I find with my experience with most software for learning languages is I can game the system pretty easily and do really well, but not feel like I've really learned anything. Being able to practice conversation with a real person is helpful.

Last year I downloaded Arabic, French, Spanish, Italian, and Hebrew language packs. Started with the Italian and slowly working through it. You will need to use other resources to compliment it, hopefully cheap ones, this is common sense though. Unless you want to sound like a $2 phrase book. But if you want it just to build up some kind of skill then go nuts, Rosetta Stone is easy to grind through and those ipod companion packs are useful for getting it to stick.

Monique, où est l'autobus?

pimsleur is better.

I considered Rosetta Stone (for Spanish) but ended up going with Fluenz Spanish instead. The main difference is that where RS emphasizes full immersion, the developers of Fluenz think that adults learn better by leveraging their knowledge of English. Children have the ability to learn by immersion right away, but as adults we can't do this effectively. That's the argument anyway, and it made sense to me which is why I went with Fluenz. I've gone through the first 14 lessons so far and I'm pretty happy with it, although both programs are expensive so this isn't a budget solution either way (aside from torrents).

If you go to the Fluenz website, they have a free demo available for Mandarin, Spanish, French, and Italian. You get to go through one of the actual lessons online, except that the demo doesn't include microphone support. I believe it's exactly the same otherwise, so you'll have a good idea what to expect.

I have a copy for Hebrew. It's worth the money if you're willing to spend time actually using it. Much like using a poker training site the value comes from taking notes, and practicing what you hear and see.

Two Gripes:

First gripe is with the microphone/recording portion. You can state back what you hear and the program grades you on how well you pronounce the words. Sometimes I swear I'm saying it correctly and yet I only get a "60%".

Second gripe is you have to understand what the program is trying to show you. If a ....
will finish this later.

Rosetta Stone R&D

"Our flashcard sales are plummeting! How are we going to stay ahead of the competition?"

"Why don't we just have a computer program show the flash cards and spend the rest of our money on an elaborate marketing campaign?"

"Perfect!"

People of OOT:

As a publishing company, 2+2 takes issues of intellectual property very seriously. By coincidence, there is also an OOT mod who takes these issues very seriously. Oh, wait, that's me.

STOP TALKING ABOUT WAYS TO STEAL THINGS ON THE INTERNET

I've been using Pimsleur (from the library), and it has been going well. I can't compare it to other software series. It is all audio, no visual, 30 mins per day.

I'm currently using this to try to learn Arabic. I've used the Pimsleur tapes (which is usually the competitor vs Rosetta as the only other worthwhile method to use on your own) before to learn German (actually was learning some decent basic German by the end of the second month but i gave up).

I've only done about 6 hours' worth with it so far but I find it much less boring than Pimsleur. I'll report back and update this thread in a couple months if I'm still using it.

EDIT: I think it's overpriced for what it is. However, if one really needs/wants to learn the language, and it actually works well enough that you can start watching movies and whatnot to then get better, it will be worth it. As said I'll report back.

Having access to Pimsleur from local libraries is so sweet. I highly recommend people take advantage of them. Great stuff imo. I've used them for Russian and had actual Russian people complement me on my accent.

Actually libraries are seriously underutilized in general in terms of this stuff. You can get lots of books on the language you want to learn so you can see it in print, plus you can get books written in the language you want and practice instant immersion that way. You learn a lot from reading a chapter book in the language of study.

This is pretty much why I think Pimsleur > RS.

I think RS's method of constantly hammering in vocab and flashing pictures is probably quite effective for an infant that hasn't been exposed to any language yet, but for an adult who's been fixated with a certain language's set of rules and conventions the RS method isn't quite as effective imo when it comes to learning a new one.

i really like pimsleur.

currently trying to learn mandarin with RS .... will post updates if that's what this thread turns into

I like Michel Thomas better than Pimsleur. I have the spanish, italian, french, and german of both. Pims is kinda boring and feels like I'm back in 7th grade spanish class. In the Michel Thomas CDs, he's saying phrases and teaching in a more conversational style with a couple of students.

+1 for pimsleur, gave me a solid introduction to Japanese several years ago

please do.

A lot better, in all languages.

I am very interested in hearing your experience, because I've been considering doing this same thing.

Stupid question probably but is it actually possible for someone to properly learn a language sat at home on the computer? Until now i thought id have to go for a college course or something..

+1


Getting Pimsleur from the library is badass.