There was a study carried out by the University of New York, which tried to gauge how effective or ineffective Rosetta Stone's Spanish course was. The study concluded that roughly 55 hours spent working with Rosetta stone equated to about 1 semester's worth of a Spanish course in College. You can find the study here.
Which Rosetta Stone Spanish Should I Buy
I wanted to reach out to you from Rosetta Stone. We appreciate the enthusiasm about our product. The current price for TOTALe Version 4 currently ranges from $179-$499, depending on which level set you are interested in. We also have a free traveler app, offered in several languages, which we'd like you to try, review, and incorporate into your post. This mobile app includes the option to include translation if you would like. We appreciate your time and look forward to hearing from you. Listening to bloggers and customers is important to us. If you're interested in reaching out to me, I can be contacted directly at dlaplante@rosettastone.com.
I tend to disagree as to whether informal or formal language should be taught first (Japanese/Korean). I learned formal Japanese first and, when I went to Japan and stayed with a family, I was told my Japanese was very "polite". I quickly picked up casual speech from listening to the family but I would not have wanted to wander around on my own, speaking rudely to clerks and train personnel. I would rather be too polite than not polite enough. If I were teaching very young children (up through 6th grade), I would concentrate on casual speech but anyone above that age should be speaking at the average level of speech which is what you speak with people outside your 'in-group' in Japan.
I have been practicing French using rosetta stone ..and at first I thought hmm I wonder if this actually works? so I checked out the Spanish, and English courses..and I can honestly say they do a pretty great job. My native language is Spanish. When I came to the United States when I was 6yrs old I couldn't understand anything most of the teachers, students, at school would say...I would just hear people speak and see...I would watch pokemon..about a year later I can honestly say I could speak English pretty good.. I could easily understand other people and with the little things I did know I learned more :) and well I think Rosetta Stone does just that..they don't go telling you girl in french is fille boy in french is garÃon with the c that has a little thing on the bottom NO you just learn it :D is amazing what the human mind can do.. I think the people that do not like this program are just ..kind of lazy and give up too fast. If you are a visual learner..Rosetta stone takes care of that..if you are an auditory learner..then it does so too..and what is even better is that you won't pass until you pronounce it correctly :) so when you say it right after many times its engraved onto your memory...and if you have trouble with it you can put an option that says the word/phrase slowly..and well if you keep failing your mind will remember is not the right way to say it..and when you get it right ta-da (most classes or reading books can't do that) most people I find nowadays however are just lazy and expect everything to just be handed to them..they expect with just some few classes they will be fluent -_- but as some people mention here it takes dedication and patience!:) I'm barely in level one in french and there is this part where the person just says something and they put me a picture...and I have to type what the person said :D and I actually knew without hesitation I would write..they passed me a horse and the person said un cheval...i typed it and I was right:) then it would go telling me Le garÃon ne conduit pas. Not only did I understand what the person was saying but I could type it just by listening :D and the first week of trying the french course I could not say cafe right i would say it over and over until i finally got it right T_T i would struggle so much with that one word but now I can do it on the first try du cafe :) sorry for rambling on but if you are a person with dedication and really want to learn the language (whichever one u want) then I recommend Rosetta Stone...now if you are the type that just gives up on the first try, or get easily irritated right away...and can't figure stuff out and needs someone else to solve issues for you..then yea Rosetta Stone is not for you...
hi, folks anyone knows if the rosetta stone for learn english american is good, i'm doing the first lesson and the problem with voice recognition maybe you should try expand decibel levels for better recognition, thats all i want to say , i hope more people share their experience with this.
Great and correctly titled Balanced review of Rosetta Stone! I am pleased that someone actually appreciates that cultural relevance in the image content delivery by Rosetta Stone should not be the focus as some people like to stress. The currency is something that can be researched later on, but it is introduced in the content as well, so again not a drawback.
Now I strongly disagree with you in the area about learning first the informal, everyday (and in some languages even rude) way to address someone. The formal way to speak should be taught first since no one would be offended if they are spoken to this way. However, you may come into a world of trouble should you use the informal way to speak to an elder or political figure if you find them out and all you know is how to say "What's up dude?!!" for example. To put things in perspective, it is always better to speak to someone using "Usted" in Spanish than "Tu" since a lot of people you interact with at any place if you have never met or been introduced to might completely dislike you, dismiss you, or in rare cases hit you should you address them using "Tu".
When you are growing up, and someone's parents have any inkling of decency and responsibility, they will teach a child to always use the word combinations May I and Please as in "May I have a banana please?" rather than encourage and let slip the oh so rude "Give me a banana", "Pass me a banana" or "I want a banana". Now do you use the expression "May I" that often and everyday? Probably not, but at least you will not come out as an uncaring rude individual if you always use it because that is the only way you know how to speak AND everyone will understand what you are communicating.
Also, the most effecient way as adults to learn a language is through classes offered by a native speaker, and frankly the cost of enrolling at colleges or institutions for 2 or 3 years of tuition comes out as far more expensive than Rosetta Stone to achieve the same level of fluency and understanding, and the electronic alternatives to Rosetta Stone are far more inferior in my opinion.
I completed Level 1 of Portugues in 1 month, and after visiting Brazil for the World Cup, I was able to engage in basic conversations with natives if they spoke to me slowly just out of this first level. I am continuing the next levels and am delighted with it. So yes, it works and I think it's worth it to get you to be able to read and understand quick provided the alphabet is one you have used most of your life. For languages using a different alphabet, more time AND a solid strategy are very important in order to save into long term memory all the content, such as Russian which I am also learning.
Hi everybody! Great review, I really enjoyed how thorough you were. I am using Rosetta Stone to study persian, a language which, though not obscure, probably boasts fewer resources in English than the more popular languages like French, Italian, German, Russian, Japanese, etc. The first Rosetta stone product I tried was Arabic, and I found it very difficult, probably because I wasn't used to the Rosetta stone process. I think if you are trying to learn a language with a different alphabet (cyrillic, arabic script, korean), I personally found it essential to study the alphabet on my own before using the Persian Rosetta Stone. Without any explanations I think its a bit of a stretch to figure out that each letter has three or four different forms depending on their position in a word. Having at least some familiarity with the alphabet really helped me hit the ground running with Rosetta Stone, although I am pretty much still at the point of illiteracy. I also think Rosetta Stone is a good tool if you already know how languages function, I wouldn't recommend it for someone learning their first second language. It becomes much easier to figure out the "rule" you are supposed to learn, if you know that different subjects take different endings for example. Then you can focus on looking at the picture and you know exactly what you are listening for. So far it seems to me like the Persian Rosetta is doing a good job of using the culturally appropriate forms (using the formal you when addressing an elder for example), but since I am still a beginner, I am not as aware of mistakes as I would be otherwise. I think your idea of including culturally appropriate food is really important, and I hope that Rosetta stone person who commented here takes note and tells the developers. I can't imagine how annoying it must be to be living in a foreign country and not now how to order the actual food they have on the menu. It seems to me that the content is pretty universal from language to language, which is a bit disappointing. But, I think its a pretty great supplemental resource (as long as you don't pay full price!!)
You should be updating your review, because the online subscription now includes up to 4 Video chat group lessons (25min each) with a native speaker per month, which is a total of 20 hours of (!) lessons in a year. Although they are supposed to be group lessons, most of the times I was alone with the teacher and they are very well trained and I felt like really learning something.
I bought the subscription for 120eur during a christmas time offer, so alltogether this is a huge value for that money.
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