A friend of mine has been using Rosetta Stone to learn Spanish for the past couple of months. She has made great progress, and I must confess that I was a little surprised. I gave her a call yesterday, and she gave me a rundown of what she does through RS, and why she feels it has been effective so far. I also went on the Rosetta Stone website to see if I could do a free lesson or two. When I clicked on the “Italian Free Demo” link, all I was able to do is watch a promotional video, which did provide some interesting information. In it, they explained that RS was created 20 years ago, and has been used by 20,000 schools, the State Department, NASA, and thousands of other individuals to learn a language. They described their method as “complete immersion”, where all of the learning is done in the L2, with no translation and lots of intuitive learning.
This was interesting, but I wanted to know more, so I chatted with one of the reps, who sent me a link to a real demo lesson. The language I chose for the lesson was Italian. Basically, the screen would show a picture of a girl and I would see and hear: “a girl” (in Italian). Then a picture of a boy would come up, also with a visual and audio effect. Then the program would show me a picture of another girl and a boy and I would have to click on the right picture depending on the whether the audio said “a girl” or “a boy”. This went on for a bit, and then the audio began to get more complex (“the girl is eating”, “the boy is drinking”, etc.) At no point was there any grammar explanation or help with conjugation.
This gave me a basic idea of how RS works. My friend explained that they have numerous other capabilities. She says they have speech recognition technology that helps you perfect your pronunciation by comparing your diction to that of native speakers. You can even practice on a smartphone. She explained she also has live native speaker tutors, who have a class either with just her or with her and another learner in a different part of the world.
Although I only did a demo, I thought this method seemed interesting and engaging. However, it worries me that there is no explicit instruction, as I think this is key, particularly when dealing with adults. But I will also wait and see how far along my friend is in another few months.
This was interesting, but I wanted to know more, so I chatted with one of the reps, who sent me a link to a real demo lesson. The language I chose for the lesson was Italian. Basically, the screen would show a picture of a girl and I would see and hear: “a girl” (in Italian). Then a picture of a boy would come up, also with a visual and audio effect. Then the program would show me a picture of another girl and a boy and I would have to click on the right picture depending on the whether the audio said “a girl” or “a boy”. This went on for a bit, and then the audio began to get more complex (“the girl is eating”, “the boy is drinking”, etc.) At no point was there any grammar explanation or help with conjugation.
This gave me a basic idea of how RS works. My friend explained that they have numerous other capabilities. She says they have speech recognition technology that helps you perfect your pronunciation by comparing your diction to that of native speakers. You can even practice on a smartphone. She explained she also has live native speaker tutors, who have a class either with just her or with her and another learner in a different part of the world.
Although I only did a demo, I thought this method seemed interesting and engaging. However, it worries me that there is no explicit instruction, as I think this is key, particularly when dealing with adults. But I will also wait and see how far along my friend is in another few months.