Dream on. But a good dream nonetheless. Duolingo is better than Rosetta Stone as it is completely free, ad free and makes people stick around better, as well as you end up with a better knowledge of the language overall. Duolingo is also heavily comparable and some might say better than university language courses as a university study showed that 34 hours of Duolingo is equal to a whole semester of university language courses :.
I think DL would absolutely be comparable or even more efficient than enrolling in an online grad dip or Open Learning Language course. I would really love to hear from anybody that commenced and finished a DL language tree then commenced a University language course.
Yeah RCPanda RS felt good, looked good but ahem Im on fire with DL Not sure why? Thanks for your response. Results vary depending on the University, the students themselves and especially the professor.
I have taken the Rosetta Stone course and although I did enjoy it duolingo still comes across as the more thorough course. I can only speak for the U. Also, I can't imagine trying to get a job that requires fluency in a language by linking to Duolingo. For me it was really valuable to be on a university course on Portuguese, after that it was way easier to improve my Portuguese on Duolingo.
If you have the chance I would always attend a university course simultaneously because you get to practice the language with other beginners which is really fun and there's no pressure to be good. As someone else already said, it depends in the course and the student. Professor Roumen Vesselinov found that 55 hours of Rosetta Stone study was of roughly the same value as an introductory college Spanish course for a sample of adults.
Among Vesselinov's research subjects, 40 percent had graduated college and an additional 36 percent had an advanced degree. Also, one-fifth of the students had previous Spanish experience. That level of college education and previous Spanish knowledge led the researcher to overstate the software's benefits for a typical undergraduate, Krashen argued. He estimated it would take 80 hours of Rosetta Stone work -- not 55 -- to equal one semester of college Spanish work.
The James Madison course uses a new version of Rosetta Stone software. Company officials estimate the class takes 45 hours to finish.
For some language professors, concerns about distance education extend even to courses with instructors. For eight semesters, he taught a section of online Spanish at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. He did not use Rosetta Stone. He shows his classes videos of cultural sites in Spanish-speaking countries and assigns online homework in which students must select correct verb conjugations.
Not communication with a machine. James Madison requires minute online conversations with native Spanish speakers who assess speaking skills and give students a chance to practice the language. For some students, she said, commuting to a campus on a set schedule might not be realistic. For others, being taught online might just be more comfortable.
Feal believes there is a place for technology to aid in language instruction. Try entering a Shakespearean sonnet into it. Yet the appeal of a computer program to replace human teaching of languages is very strong for some decision-makers. Most public schools in Alachua County, for example, do not begin world language instruction in public schools until the 8th grade.
I haven't gone more than a few minutes in yet but I really like what I'm learning. I have been using Rosetta Stone for a couple of weeks not to learn Swedish and have found it very helpful. However, I would like to point out a couple of things that have changed since the article was written or was not available at the time. The subscription pricing as dropped significantly.
However, with their Rosetta Stone Language Learning program now, the program remains active even after the online subscription expires. So if you choose not to renew the online subscription, you still have access to the regular program on your computer along with all the standard lessons; you just no longer have access to the online tutoring, games, mobile app, etc.
So even after purchasing the online subscription, you still have the product for a lifetime. One other thing that I think is useful with their Rosetta Stone Language Learning program is that the license allows you to install it on two computers. I find this helpful as I have installed on my desktop at home and my work compute to do some lesson on my work break at lunch. The computer software also allows up to 5 learns per computer, so if my wife, or son, wanted to start using it, I wouldn't need to purchase additional licenses.
They can use the software already installed. The also have the option of deactivating it on an installed computer so you can install it on a different one e. I am not sure if the other products you mentioned offer similar options, but I did find these to be very appealing.
I would like to point out that I am in no way affiliated with Rosetta Stone. I did find your article very fair and balanced and have started checking out some of your other articles all of which I have liked so far. Keep up the great work! Where Rosetta Stone fails: inaccurate and boring! That being said, as long as its not used alone, it's not totally worthless in its educational value.
That's a good summary -- but pretty much any year old can write up software that does pretty much the exact same thing in about a couple of hours.
I work at it 5 days a week. All I can do is recognize certain words but have no idea how to put them together into sentences I am a college graduate, but this program has made me feel like the worlds biggest idiot. Donovan - Thank you for your very balanced and thought out review of RS. You asked if other RS languages have an issue with "honorifics.
I think get away with using "du" syntax because I am an American, but is has taken some older people by surprise. It is generally not ideal to walk up to someone you don't know and address them with "du;" something RS doesn't address.
I had already taught myself some Dutch years ago. I bought textbooks, phrase books, cassette courses, and a great dictionary. For teaching myself, I learned a great deal. The only thing is that I didn't have anyone to speak Dutch with.
I like the idea of being taught by a native speaker and repeating phrases back. I also like the feature of reading and recording a story and getting immediate feedback. There are some instances where there will be something thrown at me and I have to figure out what I am supposed to do. Thank you for your review. I will check out the other options you mentioned before I commit.
My daughter and son in law bought Rosetta Stone for me to continue my French study after completing the DuoLingo tree free! I wanted to progress further with French but instead I feel I have gone into remedial education and it is moving very slowly. I had assumed I could move quickly to the place where I need more work. It is moving very slowly with repetition of what I already know, yet I get dinged in pronunciation that makes no sense at all.
It seems to not be able to consistently pick up my voice, using a microphone headset I purchased just for this. I can say the exact same thing several times when it counts it wrong. There is no explanation to show what it sees as wrong so I keep saying the same thing in exactly the same way and after a couple of tries, nearly shouting into the mic it counts it as correct.
I swear there is no change at all because I know I am saying it correctly, so there is no reason to change it. I feel very badly that my kids, who really can't afford this, gave a well-meaning gift with the best of intentions. I consider it a waste of money and I have gone far enough in the program to see this is going to be a long, tedious year - not the best use of time and resources but I feel I must for the sake of their sacrifice.
I must say, I thought for the price, it would do more than free language programs. I hope I get to new material sooner than it appears it will happen; otherwise it is really a waste. I am german and got the RS French course as download software last Christmas 5 weeks ago. I have started to learn french 4 weeks before by meeting a french teacher one hour a week.
I did 6 Units out of 20 total in that time spending 1hour a day. So I am able to complete a Unit in a week, perhaps the full course in 20 weeks. Lessons that drive me to speak french are much more usefull and the writing lessons are the hardest, here I need 2 or 3 repetitions to accomplish the lesson. I complement the RS by hearing to french audio books every day and still continuing the real life teacher sessions once a week. That feels very efficient. Doing only the RS course would be far too less to grasp the language for real communication.
At the bottom line, I am happy with the RS course as one component of learning french. I am happy with 'unclear' sentences and can accept to understand it later, but my partner cannot learn in that way and is unhappy with the lack of grammar and translations I'm not sure if every library offers this, but through San Diego Library we have access to Rosetta Stone online for free.
Just click on the Education and Languages Databases link and sign up and voila there you go! Totally free. Thanks for a great review of its features. It worked very well for me and I'm curious to see if Rosetta works as well. There is definitely nothing like immersion in the local culture for language learning, but most of us don't have that option before we land somewhere! For Japanese and Korean , I find that none of the big names cover that well. Also loving idea that you should wait until you understand.
I find that in the school system there is a big focus on understanding immediately. I think it actually hurts us in the long run, because we end up THINKING the language through logically, which means we produce and produce much more slowly. Every linguist is different, but for me, I feel in control of a language when I can leave English at the door. For me, the way to get good at foreign languages is to separate them from your native language.
With RS, you can do that from the start. Are there programs you recommend for learning Welsh? Rosetta Stone discontinued it and I can't even seem to find a used copy to purchase. Not finding much online. Thank you, this review was the first I found to go beyond the question, "Is it worth it? I already purchased it and I am 2 lessons into unit 4 of RS Spanish. What I wanted to know was is it worth the time I'm investing in it. I wasn't sure if it was working or if my additional side work of reading articles.
I think I'll stick with the RS. If nothing else it's good practice. I find it to be balanced, and it's pretty accurate. I haven't studied all yet, but I hoarded them when prices go on sale. My first course was Latin American Spanish. That was a little difficult because it was hard to figure out the point that RS was trying to make. While the use of the same pictures and formats might cause boredom for some people, I think this speeds things up since I'm not puzzled about the point they're trying to get across.
I have a subscription for Dutch to Rosetta Stone. It turns out there are only 12 units and this covers a tiny proportion of what would be needed for even basic conversation. I did all the units and associated activities When I enquired about the fact that I had done everything, Rosetta Stone told me I could just do the games from now on until the end of my subscription in several months!!!
I agree with you that it is extremely expensive for what it offers, and not exactly honest about the product! Bought the Rosett Stone download version. Or did I buy the marketing? YES Worked great for about 6 months. Took a break. A year later it crashed. RS sent another serial number and rather involved instructions for getting it off my machine.
A year later it crashed again an wouldn't reboot. Tried yet another install. Worked for a day and crashed. Contacted the company. When done that way, it may seem harder initially, but that is a misleading perception, and eventually the learner will start THINKING in such new language.
It is noticed because at such time, the learning may know how to say something in the NEW language but NOT in the native one for a particular word or idea. That moment represents an inflexion point, from which learning explodes in a positive exponential way. Then, learning the new language accelerates very significantly and even becomes a joy! It is really amazing! That is also the natural way in which kids learn their mother language, and my own experience when I started learning English non native for me as a year-old adult.
The best language course that I have found is this. It is a real pedagogic jewel, and probably the best ever produced, since it uses no translation to other language and a natural approach to learn, including humorous stories, fantastic songs that could be considered as commercial and drills in which the students listen, speak and correct themselves. It is even better than having a personal English teacher! Currently, the best that I have found working that way is Rosetta Stone.
Is it expensive? Maybe for some people, but not for me, taking into account what if offers, as explained above. Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with them in any way.
Rosetta Stone and other language apps are now available to use from home if you belong to a local library that has it. Through my family and their local libraries in many US states I have found Rosetta Stone, Mango language, And transparent language including a kids version. I saw my library also offers some romance languages through a tutoring app for students, and foreign language books, movies, music and magazines.
AND depending on your state, there might be statewide resources available. This is the defenitive Roseta stone review, thank you very much for this, I would like to learn a bit of Esperanto and might start that way, of course that it would just be a hobby in a sense it is a dead language but again I am more than happy to do my bit to help the language survive. It is expensive no doubt, I will look into the alternatives and might do a routine to learn 2 or more languages.
Thank you for all the reviews you've taken the time to put together. I found your site today while looking for real reviews of the best language learning tool available. I have signed up to be in the "guild" and look forward to reading more here on the site. I wanted to share with you and your readers that The black Friday sales are great depending on which one you choose.
By the way, I do not work for them and I am a real person who's taking a family trip to France next year so we are trying to learn the language before we go. I am curious to know which system you think would work best for us. We are a family of 5 with the youngest being 11 years old. This review highlights faults in Rosetta Stone without significantly comparing it to other products I feel that other products struggle with many of the same challenges as Rosetta Stone.
You could improve this by highlighting the differences vs. What's the best value vs. Second, you tend to focus on how it teaches languages that are more difficult for native english speakers to learn arabic, japanese, korean.
Some treatment of easier languages that have larger population of learners would be nice. Using the RS free trias l or 1st level was the first time i ever thought in spanish. Having taken 2 yrs of spanish in high school, and 4 semesters in university, earning As and Bs, but i not once thought in spanish.
Id think in english and translate internally to spanish. Because RS makes you "work" to figure out each translation intuitively like people got impatient about, you wind up thinking in the language I SAW juevos in my fridge. The spanish word came immediately. For the first time. This was maybe the 2nd lesson -definitely within the first hour-, and by the end i was thinking in their spanish vocabulary as if immersed. Maybe it helped i already passed intermiate college spanish and therefore could already write a several paragraph story using the infinitivo or preterit tense, or play a role in a 10 min quasi-improv sketch en espanol.
Maybe it helped that i quickly "got" the missing words. What would be your recommendation if I am already quite strong in the language French but would like to improve Especially conversationally? How would you say they compare in amount and difficulty of content? I'm particularly interested in the "level cap", so to speak, of each program. In my experience, there are loads of resources to help with the very basics, but especially with free stuff the tutorial ends with the student at a mid-beginner level, leaving the student to continue independently even though they're still struggling to read a newspaper.
Thank you so much for this in depth analysis. I would like to share my comments as a nobody with an opinion lol. And you can pay ot over 3 month. For me this was a selling point. Now I'm learning french and mandarin and i use it every day so i find it a great investment. I agree with you it is important to learn without direct translation. For me again this is a huge selling point.
It is frustrating sometimes but i go with it and usually i have it by the review. I also agree you should use multiple avenues of learning. I do rs, pimsleur, duolingo, and i have a textbook and a workbook. Each gives their own take on education and i find it very helpful. I also use index card to study vocab. That's my ultimate question. I just recently cancelled my RS subscription as in 47 min ago. I had bought the 3-pay lifetime subscription plan, and I had been using it at least five days a week for a month to learn Japanese and some Spanish.
I was initially drawn to RS because of the endless marketing and that I could learn multiple languages for life for one fee.
I was fairly satisfied with what I was learning, but something changed immediately once I tried a sample of Pimsleur not advocating for Pimsleur. While Pimsleur has its own drawbacks, after a free min lesson I tried there, I felt that I had covered an equitable amount of everything I had managed to learn in a month using RS.
I felt like RS was taking eons and my hard work was going mostly into trying to decipher hiragana for myself and working out what all the nuances of the basic grammatical structure entailed.
While I remember what I taught and discovered on my own, it was proving to be drudgery - especially when a brief audio lesson was able to offer needed and useful insight that I could not receive through RS.
After searching this blog more thoroughly I think I am going to give Rocket Japanese a try. Its sample material already piques my interest and seems to be more charismatic and enjoyable than what I have been seeing with supplements like Duolingo etc. Let's hope this works! Immersion was used in my Peace Corps language acquisition in and worked wonderfully.
That said, it was total immersion in a village with native speaking teachers who just happened to also have a pretty good grasp of English. Just keep listening and repeating and hearing it in the village with the host family and in 4 weeks I tested out at 3 out of 5 on some academic test.
I did Rosetta for a month too scotch to go past the 30 day money back period to try it out. Not having the grammar was initially frustrating but then I settled down and just went with the flow. Yea, there were times I swore I was pronouncing correct or incorrect and RS gave me the wrong cue, but these were pretty rare and some I am sure was the connection being pesky and the capability of my computer.
Mango does a great job giving the phonetic spelling of the language that would have helped a bit with RS on some of the tricky words I had to try over and over again. Mango also spends time with culture and grammar notes but it is more work to retain the language even with the additional cultural and grammar understanding.
I now think I will go for the current deal on the lifetime languages at RS as I think 24 or so for that price is pretty good and as they break it down to 3 monthly payments it's less than a cup of coffee anywhere in the world for those 3 months. I can also supplement this with Mango. In my search for online Tagalog learning, none of them were really cheap as a package and Babel and Duo did not even have Tagalog.
That is why I ended up at RS. This was before I found out my library had Mango. I will say this It was a limited time offer that I had seen as an ad Be very careful as to what you agree to. For example I am on the French one and the speaker pronounces ".. Singular vs plural regular conjugated verbs are pronounced the same but spelt differently. I've raised this with their support but to have this type of error doesn't instil confidence. It's an absolutely unforgivable mistake.
How could it have passed UAT testing and quality control? And if they are capable of making this level of error it implies there are going to be plenty other mistakes lurking about it there. With a kid who will likely be stuck at home with me during the Covids indefinitely, it seems like a good addition to our curriculum.
I used to speak a few languages and it seems, along with some free programs, like it might be kinda awesome. Your main objection to Rosetta Stone is it's not worth the money, that other programs you mention are more economical. But the figures you give don't bear this out. Sure, some people will have to dig deep, and others won't be able to afford it at all, but those folks can't afford a monthly subscription to other software--OVER THE TERM it would take to learn a language.
The program surely has other shortcomings, but price is not really one of them. Any language learning process or program is going to be incremental, over an extended period of time, and therefore anyone that pays a monthly or hourly rate will rack up charges far greater than Rosetta Stone. Excellent review! It's laid out quite differently from Foundations.
Also, there are videos and increased contextualization. The videos are staged and can be very dry and groan-inducing, but they are effective. I should add that as a learner of languages 6 to varying degrees of proficiency , I absolutely love Rosetta Stone. When I used it for the first time, I was blown away. Here was a language learning software that ACTUALLY strives to immerse you; no translations to filter the target language through, no time wasted on preaching wordy and dubious grammar rules, picture support with intuitive ways of building your own language knowledge bit by bit, immense amounts of content and thoughtfully arranged progression from one lesson to another.
For me Rosetta Stone has been worth every cent — I actually thought the price you quoted was for access to one language not all of them — so it seems an absolute steal to me. I contacted Rosetta Stone and Indigo book store and am told I have to buy it again if I want to use it. I love rosetta stone and I am very happy with it. I've tried duolingo and other free software but rosetta is the most complete and convenient to me. I'm curious that I don't see Pimsleur mentioned anywhere.
I borrowed 36 cd's from the library - for free - over a period of a year or so, and found it to mega excellent. I read in your review about Native American languages. I already have my languages I study and I have no plans to add anything else, but it would be really cool to learn Navajo!
Thanks Pete. If you buy the CD or downloadable version, you own it for life. When I emailed support on Rosetta Stone, they sent this reply: In order to provide the most up-to-date and effective language-learning solutions, we are recommending all learners switch to our online platforms as we no longer support CD-ROM and Digital Download programs.
These were built on technology that is not compatible with the latest operating systems. Would you like to check out our online experience? Rosetta Stone Online has all of the benefits of our traditional program, along with exclusive new features and mobility to take it on the go! All you need is the activation code from your old product or your email address to get started.
Has gone up in smoke according to Rosetta Stone! I also purchased Spanish for my grandchildren shortly after I bought the Italian.
I was working back then, so I saved up to buy these programs. Thanks for listening! See All Reviews. Currently learning: Greek. Arabic Resources.
Spanish Resources. French Resources. Italian Resources. German Resources. Mandarin Chinese Resources. Hindi Resources.
Portuguese Resources. Korean Resources. Japanese Resources. Russian Resources. Other Language Resources. Written by Donovan Nagel.
Read time 16 mins. Comments Despite some faults, Rosetta Stone is a unique course and a very effective tool and after many years. Rosetta Stone. Overpriced Inappropriate formality in some languages Culturally irrelevant images Lack of explanations may bother some.
Depth: This is 'content' richness. Uniqueness: Is Rosetta Stone innovative or is it just an imitation? Does it have a unique selling proposition USP that makes it stand out among competitors? Cost: Is Rosetta Stone acceptably priced and how does its pricing compare to market competition?
See Rosetta Stone Alternatives. Does it work or is it just a well-marketed waste of time? Because of this it can be a challenge for fence-sitters to find reliable feedback. See Rosetta Stone.
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