Learn Chinese with Rosetta Stone???

[Neil_1985]

Has anyone tried to learn Chinese using the Rosetta Stone: Chinese level 1,2 and 3 (Mandarin) with Audio companion?

Any good? If not, which course do you recommend?

Basically I have been trying to learn Chinese for some time now, and have realised that I have a lot of choice when it comes to me parting with my money. It’s like finding a needle in a haystack when it comes to finding the good courses.

Some of these courses come with big price tags attached to them (Like this Rosetta Stone course).

Although the courses price is pretty steep I am willing to pay, as long as I am sure it is as good as they are advertising it to be.

Many thanks for any feedback.

[anon6969]

Personally I found the first Chinese Rosetta Stone that I tried really boring and useless.Even though I got it for free, I didn't use it because it was that bad. I wouldn't recommend it to anybody.

I would recommend these approaches to learning Chinese: Find some beginner lessons that you can attend in a real classroom with others. Furthermore check out the Newbie/Beginner Podcasts at ChinesePod.com. Also subscribe to this forum for good information from fellow Chinese students. Also get some Chinese friends, watch some Chinese movies, listen to some Chinese music. The website Lang-8.com is a great place to practice writing Chinese and people will correct your writing for free.

[bhchao]

I much prefer Pimsleur when learning a new language. Rosetta is a ripoff in my opinion. Too expensive and not much value.

[Neil_1985]

Thanks alot guyz. I think you have saved me a bundle.

As you say bhchao the Rosetta course is a huge ripoff by the sounds of things. Considering that you (anon6969) say you got the first stage for free and is still wasn’t good enough.

Thanks a lot for the web sites too. I’ve already checked them out, and they look real helpful.

[wrbt]

Rosetta spends a ton on advertising and makes some pretty bold (and impossible to quantify thus dispute) claims regarding their product.

I think Pimsleur will indeed get you talking faster with so much repetition on core vocabulary, but it's not cheap either. If you're not going to take a formal class use it in conjunction with a textbook that has an audio component like Integrated Chinese.

[ocrtech]

I am currently using version 3 of Rosetta Stone as one of my tools to learn Mandarin. I am currently in Course 2, Level 3. I have also recently started using chineselearnonline.com's free audio course as well as the Beginning Chinese book by John DeFrancis.

Each of these tools has its strength and weaknesses. I find that Rosetta Stone does a very good job with repitition and embedding vocabulary into my brain. They do this by having me listen to it, speak it, write it, and read it in pinyin. However, I have to make sure I have a good dictionary around at the beggining of each new level to make sure I am understanding correctly what the words are suppose to mean.

I also like the speech recognition functionality which forces me to pronounce the words closer to how they actually should be. The audio only courses that I found, like chineselearnonline.com, don't have a feedback mechanism to tell you how close you are getting. Speech recognition isn't perfect and can at times be frustrating but with a little work I understand what pronuciation mistakes I am making.

The weakneses I find are a lack of focus on grammer, no english translation of anything, and I found that I was starting to become dependent on seeing the pinyin and was using that as a crutch in translating the sentences while they were spoken.

Overall I am happy with Rosetta Stone and find it continues to add value to my studies. It does things that neither the book nor audio courses do and I personally feel I wouldn't be very far along without it.

[anticks]

Im at the point where i feel my vocabulary is not up to scratch as much as my grammer and speaking.

Ocrtech: How long did it take you to get to where you are now in Rosetta Stone? How long did you study per week?

[Akarui]

I also agree Rosetta Stone is not very efficient, unless you already have strong backgrounds and that you use the software just to review vocabulary.

As for beginners book, I would recommend you "Short-term spoken chinese" edited by BLCU. The vocabulary is quite usefull and actual, and the exercices are not so boring. But to begin, I think the best is to have some group class. Try a 4-week intensive courses in China. Even if it is very short, it will give you the basics and the love of chinese language.

[anticks]

i think im going to finish FSI and maybe move onto it after for some vocab building..

Does anyone know the word count on rosetta stone and if its a good tool for retaining vocab in a not so boring way? lol

[ocrtech]

@anticks

I was using it approximately 1 hour per day, 5 days per week up to about a month ago. At that point I started integrating CLO and the grammar book and now use Rosetta Stone about twice a week. Altogether I have been using Rosetta Stone for about 5 months.

I am going much slower than the estimate Rosetta Stone has per lesson. They approximate about an hour per course and you automatically repeat each course twice. They have 4 courses per session and 4 sessions per lesson. If my math is correct, that is 32 hours of instruction per lesson. No way I came any where close to that. If I had to guess, I would say it took me around 70 hours to finish the first lesson.

In the beginning of December I had a chance to visit China for a week. At first I didn't have confidence in speaking Chinese because all I did with Rosetta Stone was talk into a microphone. Once I realized they could understand what I was saying, I quickly took every opportunity to speak to the locals. The second problem was although I could ask for directions, order food, etc., I struggled understanding the response. In fact more often than not I couldn't understand what was being said. This was a combination of a small vocabulary and the fact that I focused too much on using the pinyin as a crutch and not enough on straight listening. That is why I have integrated CLO.

[Dawei1]

Pimsleur is definitely the best way to start. It's strengths are: 1) teaching you to express your needs, 2) getting you to think in Mandarin, and 3) giving you good pronunciation (the latter was very surprising considering that there is no one to correct you. I'm no language person, yet I have no trouble being understood).

Pim's weaknesses are: 1) nothing in writing, which makes reviewing materials difficult 2) limited vocabulary and limited practice in comprehension. Hence, if someone responds to you in an unexpected way, you won't know what they are talking about.

Once you've finished Pim I, II, & III, Chinesepod.com is a good adjunct. It's lessons aren't designed for speaking practice, so you'll build comprehension more than speaking skills. However, it's instructors are wonderfully creative & engaging and it's a great way to build situation-specific vocabulary and knowledge of pinyin & characters. It may be just me, but I find that if I use only Chinesepod, my grammar skills degrade and I have to return to Pim III to refresh them. Watching movies w/subtitles also helps much with comprehension.

[ABCinChina]

Rosetta Stone is definitely not worth the price it is listed for though it may be OK for beginners or if it is free. They basically use the same pictures and program for every language but just change the sound files. I think other programs can accomplish what Rosetta Stone does at a fraction of the cost.

[ocrtech]

I seldom see negative comments of Rosetta Stone by users who complete an entire language series. I started using RS Mandarin about 9 months ago and have now finished all 3 levels in the series. Although it has some shortcomings, its teaching approach seemed to fit well with my learning style and goals (listening and speaking) and I feel I wouldn't be as far along as I am now.

For me, RS, supplemented with the free ChineseLearnOnline.com audio lessons and using the book, Beginning Chinese by John Defrancis was a good combination. I suspect true imersion would be better but this is the closest that I could come up with at the time.

[flameproof]

I also tried RS. My impression was mixed between dull and boring.

I did also all 3 Pimsleur. It's a good way to learn how to listen and speak. However, after you finish level 3 your knowledge is still quite low. Too low to jump on ChinesePod Intermediate.

What I do now is: I read the ChineseBreeze bools. I love them, they have no pinyin and are a good way to get confronted with easy characters. My character knowledge improved a lot and it's cool to actually be able to read a chinese book.

I don't listen to the CDs as my pronunciation and listening is ok.

[Dawei1]

One surprisingly good (and enjoyable) way to build comprehension is to watch Chinese movies w/English subtitles. I started after I had completed Pim 1-3 as well as an old Pimsleur cassette series from the Amer Management Assoc (from my local library). When I watched my 1st film, I understood maybe ~1 in 50 words, even when I replayed parts again & again. Overtime, this increased to 1 in 20. Now, it's 2-4 in 10. Also, now when I walk in Chinatown, I can catch bits & pieces of conversations.

Chinesepod is also very helpful in regards to comprehension, particularly because they will teach you context specific language (i.e., if you want to learn to talk about mp3 players, you can listen to the lessons on this topic). I agree with Flameproof that Pimsleur is insufficient to get you to the Intermediate level at Chinesepod.

One way Chinese is different from the European languages is that a very imporant aspect of fluency is learning how to put together Chinese words to express new meanings, i.e., door + closed = the store is closed. Very not wrong = very good/very correct. Although context specific meaning is an aspect of every language, it plays a larger role in Chinese.

[the.yangist]

I couldn't see how progress was actually measured using the system, so I ended up learning how to say, "一匹馬在跳," and so forth about fifty times before I realized that I was gauging myself. By that point, I was so bored that I didn't care anymore.

It reminded me of marketing Quine's gavagai problem to the masses. If I hadn't already known some Chinese, I don't know how this would have been of any instructional value.

[LegendLength]

I'm don't really understand why some would classify RS as dull compared to other techniques. It's pretty much just a few standard methods rolled into one (admittedly overpriced) package. i.e. listening, reading, writing, 'picture flash cards'.

I've used it for about 6 months and am mid-way though lesson 2 which puts me on a few hundred words. Each lesson contains 16 modules and they can be done in 2 or 3 hours each.

Things I don't like about it:

- You need to use a separate dictionary to look up new words at the start of a section. The software seems to imply that people can go through it without a dictionary and just learn the words using context and the images but I would personally hate that type of ambiguity. I think it's a bad system for muscle memory.

- It's way overpriced. You may be able to pick up the older version cheap (v2) but it's lower quality than v3. Although, having tried v2 for a few months it wasn't that much worse in terms of content. Just production values.

- It doesn't repeat vocabulary enough. It gives you a bunch of new words and then never brings them up again. It does re-use some of them in later sections but I wish it did it much more.

- It's annoyingly slow to go to the next screen. It seriously seems to chew up like 1/3 of the lesson time.

What I like about it:

- The images help to recall vocabulary if I happen to forget a word. This is really the main thing that sets it apart from Pimsleur for me. I do consider myself a 'visual' rather than 'audio' person so that may play a big part in it. I found Pimsleur really difficult but still have it and plan to try again soon.

- The writing section has helped me a lot in remembering pinyin spelling and pronunciation.

- It's very well produced (i.e. clear images and voice, saves your progress, no errors in the text, order of vocabulary introduction seems well thought out).

[aelfwyne]

Sorry for thread necromancy, I searched for any newer threads on this topic but there were none, so I will respond here.

I agree with the preceding post by LegendLength. If you think RS is dull, you haven't really studied languages much. For someone who is self-studying and not in China, RS is a great introduction to the language. Will you learn conversational skills using it? Nope. But it will enforce repetition, which while you may consider it boring, is essential for learning the basics of a language.

I've studied German, Spanish & Latin before. You wanna talk about boring? Try learning all 96 declensions of a Latin adjective. Things like that can't be done quickly as an adult without repetition.

I do agree on some points. RS *is* overpriced, however, I think it's the best introduction. Few other self-study systems, including Pimsleur, include any method of reinforcing what you learn. Sure, they have flash cards, etc. But you need to HEAR and SEE repeatedly to learn. You can play the same mp3 track from ChinesePod over and over, but it is easy to tune that out of your head, or hear it without really hearing it, if you're not being constantly asked for feedback like you are in RS.

True, you can put together a multi-system "system" and gauge your own progress. Myself, I'm a couple of units into RS, and I have found it VERY powerful. I can listen to Chinese TV/Movies and pick up a decent number of words now. I may not be able to tell you what's going on, but I have only been studying for about 4 weeks.

As for the criticisms, yes some of them are accurate. You'll want a dictionary on hand. I use Hanping Chinese-English dictionary on my Android phone, with the MOTO IME that lets me input hanzi using handwriting recognition. That way I don't have to exit the program to lookup words. You'll also want to use all of the resources you have here to learn grammer, the overall context of the language, and details that RS skips over. Remember, RS focuses on spoken language, even though it does introduce pinyin and hanzi. What I do when I get halfway through a unit, is turn off the Pinyin. There is a box at the bottom of the screen in RS3 that lets you select pinyin+hanzi, hanzi only, or pinyin only. It is your choice to depend on the pinyin, if you turn it off, you can reinforce the listening skills and/or hanzi skills. If you want to reinforce hanzi recognition, for example, run through a lesson with the speakers turned off, and pinyin disabled.

Obviously, it's not everything. But I think it is probably the most important tool I've found for reinforcing the core of my mandarin learning. I've learned more from the RS lessons than I have from attempts at listening to podcasts, etc. I am sure, once I complete all 3 levels, that then I'll benefit more from the sample conversations you get from many of the audio lessons.

I do agree with LegendLength that it takes way too long to load the next screen. While learning new vocabulary, I don't mind. But if I repeating a lesson to reinforce what I've learned or review, it really slows things down.

Now, all of that said. Obviously, a well-structured course at a university or private language school is going to beat out RS. But I'd still use RS in the language lab if it were available. And, hands-on time in China or with Chinese speakers would be invaluable as well. But these things are not available to everyone for time and/or cost reasons.

If you don't have those resources, and are learning from home, and have a chance to get RS - don't pass it up as merely "boring"... because if you think it's boring, you either already know what it has to teach you, or you're probably not going to succeed in learning Chinese through any other self-study method.

[kjspring]

I started learning Mandarin about a year ago. At first I asked a native Chinese friend to help me. That failed because of lack of time. I eventually hired a tutor. Three tutors and about 8 months later I finally found a tutor that knows how to teach. The other 2 were more doing this without previous teaching experience.

I am unable to take Chinese courses at my university since I am a graduate student and they want us to 'focus' on our research. This is why I chose the private tutor route, but even if I was taking a university course I would still use a private tutor. Once you find a good tutor (and I found her on Craigslist) he or she will be able to speak to you and do some of the practice exercises. We are going through New Practical Chinese Reader. We go through about 1 lesson every 2 weeks. We also go through the workbook. I find the CD's extremely boring but when she takes the lessons and does these then I learn more quickly. She also gives background on some of the words, characters, and culture.

Some other things I do is to use Rosetta Stone. I complete about 4 exercises a day. My favorite about Rosetta stone is the speech recognition and the listening skills you learn. I do not think Rosetta Stone is for brand new beginners. I think you need to have a bigger knowledge of vocabulary and pronunciation of pinyin first. You also need to know the hanzi of the words you have learned. This includes writing and reading. One of my favorite things to do is to read and write in Chinese.

For example, I completed up to lesson 8 of the New Practical Chinese reader before opening up Rosetta Stone. I find the Pimsleur CDs extremely boring. I try to listen to them but my mind ends up wandering. These I will listen to more after I get more familiar with the hanzi and pinyin of the new words, as I am a visual learner.

Native speakers are important. Rosetta Stone has a website online so you can practice languages with other people. I usually use Skype or QQ to talk to native speakers but this website helps you find them. sharedtalk.com

I guess what you should take from this post is to use multiple resources. Each thing has a weakness but if you combine many resources you may be able to find your own weakness.

[chrix]

Incidentally, Sinoglot had a post on Michael Phelps using Rosetta Stone to learn Mandarin: http://www.sinoglot.com/blog/2010/02/25/phelps-on-grammatical-gender-in-mandarin/