What is your experience with Rosetta Stone language learning software?

[Shelley]

My experience was with first incarnation of RS. I didn't find any of the things you say as a problem. They did use pictures of oriental people and they did seem to tailor the vocab for Chinese.

 

My biggest complaint with RS was the lack of any explanations or any teaching of grammar. It seem to me to just be an elaborate flashcard program.

 

You learnt lots of vocab but not much else.

 

As I say this was with version one it may have changed with later versions.

[Angelina]

 

My biggest complaint with RS was the lack of any explanations or any teaching of grammar.

 

Ok, they were not teaching grammar explicitly. What about the content? Do you remember if they were teaching any classifiers? Any 这个／这些 flashcards? Or was it mostly 同学／同学们？

[Guest realmayo]

they haven't really done anything to adapt it to suit the Mandarin language, or Chinese culture

 

 

I dabbled with the Korean one a while ago and I don't think there was anything at all 'Korean' in terms of food, holidays, etc, but I also don't think that was a problem at all, it doesn't make any difference to picking up the structure and the sounds of a language.

 

Years ago I was sceptical of the idea of RS but I know someone who used it -- and nothing else -- for Chinese and ended up with not very advanced Chinese, sure, but with much more natural-sounding tones than you'd expect a normal learner at that level to have achieved.

 

I'd say it's one way in to the language, but of course there are others, most of which are cheaper.

[Shelley]

No they didn't teach any thing explicitly. it is supposed to be a learn from example and content method I think.

 

For example they show a picture of a cat on a car, a red lantern, a girl and a man.

 

Then you have to pick the one that matches the audio. If you get it wrong it comes round again. If the audio is miao for cat and you choose cat you get a big green tick but nothing else, so is it a cat or a car? later you get other pictures with cars and you realise that che is car and miao is cat

 

It didn't seem to have any structure to it. Some people seem to really like it but I did not get on with it all .

 

You can choose to have characters but there didn't seem to be any practice for writing. No explanations about how characters work.

 

Nothing about tenses or rather the lack of tenses and how time is expressed in Chinese.

 

It might be fine as an addition to other learning material but for me absolutely not as my only learning tool.

 

I just didn't get on with it.

[gabbklein]

 

I do how ever have say I don't think you would have done so well if you had only used RS.

 

I absolutely agree, @Shelley! I also think a first-time language learner would be lost.

 

 

And you didn't pay for it. Getting your monies worth wasn't hard.

 

Your logic is impeccable!

 

 

Here's another thread you might like then.

 

Thanks, @imron! Time to put my mouth to the test.

 

 

Or have RS improved their Mandarin Chinese version since I saw those reviews?

 

 

@Demonic_Duck, I'm no expert in Chinese culture, but they seem to have improved somewhat from your description. I haven't learned a lot of food terms yet. Some are universal (水果，肉，蔬菜，米饭). Some are possibly more "western"? (苹果，牛奶，面包). I haven't learned any holidays yet; however, in the leveled story for the unit I'm on now, they talk about 月饼. The photos were obviously chosen to be as diverse as possible, but the backgrounds could be anywhere in Europe. I learned 外婆和外公，奶奶和爷爷，兄弟 (哥哥和弟弟），and 姐妹（姐姐和妹妹）.

[Demonic_Duck]

I dabbled with the Korean one a while ago and I don't think there was anything at all 'Korean' in terms of food, holidays, etc, but I also don't think that was a problem at all, it doesn't make any difference to picking up the structure and the sounds of a language.

 

Sure it doesn't make any difference to structure and sounds, but they're only a part of it. It makes sense that the content should be tailored to the language being taught.

 

I bought an English-Chinese picture dictionary (sold in the UK and clearly designed for English speakers) a while back and found it suffers from this problem. Want to learn about food? Great, here are the words for pizza, hamburger and salad, but as for Chinese food we only have chow mein and sweet-and-sour. Thirsty? We have black and green tea, but no chrysanthemum, oolong or jasmine. Something to take the edge off? Here, have a glass of whisky, or maybe some brandy. Baijiu? Never heard of it. When it comes to instruments, you can try your hand at all sorts of brass, woodwind, string, keyboard and percussion instruments, but there isn't a pipa, erhu, guqin or guzheng in sight. And you can learn about how to say "bar/bat mitzvah" in Chinese (very useful if you're Jewish), but you can forget about even the most basic and ubuquitous of Chinese festivals.

 

The main use I get out of that dictionary now is that one of my young students likes to look things up in it when she comes for class. As an added bonus, it also gives her a good grounding in the infamous “西方文化”!

 

Then you have to pick the one that matches the audio. If you get it wrong it comes round again. If the audio is miao for cat and you choose cat you get a big green tick but nothing else, so is it a cat or a car? later you get other pictures with cars and you realise that che is car and miao is cat

 

Cat is “猫” māo, “喵” miāo is the onomatopea for cat sounds (i.e. equivalent to “meow”).

[Shelley]

Thanks for the correction Demonic_Duck.

 

Apparently RS couldn't even teach me that correctly.  

 

Actually I rushed the post and didn't check it.

[GilbertDawson]

My experience is with RS version 3. Let me first say that RS is , in my opinion, not worth what they charge for it. If you're buying at full price, buy elsewhere.

 

That said, I did find the software incredibly useful to an extent. When I began on Rosetta Stone, I had been studying the language for only a couple of weeks, haunting forums like this one and reading free library resources, so had a couple dozen words and some idea of how tones work. Rosetta's immersion approach was, for me, excellent. It's not for everyone, but it suited my learning style and I am grateful for it. Thanks to the immersion and repetition, it's now just about impossible for me to forget how to say a large number of things in Mandarin on reflex.

 

However, after the first level I lost interest. This is because at Level 2, there's a steep increase in the amount of verbiage they throw at you while still offering no explanation of the material. It's about at this stage of language that even L1 learners of Chinese start learning their L1 systematically in school to supplement organic acquisition from parents, etc. After a point, I needed to start learning syntax in more than a case-by-case way. There are also some things that, I believe, Rosetta Stone just can't teach effectively, such as abstract concepts. For example, most learners would come to understand 把 construction with enough immersive exposure, but it's so much faster to explain its rules in the L1 and move on.

 

From my own experiences and the opinions of those I've asked who have also tried RS, it's not for everyone but does have its perks. Most importantly, I would say that if you do use it and are serious about learning the language, do not make it your only resource. This should be said of any resource (never use just one!), but of RS especially. At least in version 3 and older, character writing is not taught at all. It never explains what a radical is. The list goes on.

 

One thing I am grateful to the program for is exactly what it was built for: it gets you talking, and fast. So many people I know (L2 learners of Chinese and L2 learners of English) have adept skills in writing, reading and understanding their L2 but find themselves really struggling with speaking (it's still my worst field). But RS got me talking right off the hop and gave a decent vocab repertoire in just a week or two. Which is what is was designed for. There are other resources out there: Pimsleurs (didn't like), DuoLinguo (haven't tried), and the new website FluentU (I enjoyed this one) to name a few. Go out and explore them, and you may find one that really fits.

[Demonic_Duck]

^ Good review. There is one thing I'd like to query, though - you mention that "it's about at [equivalent to RS level 2] stage of language that even L1 learners of Chinese start learning their L1 systematically in school to supplement organic acquisition from parents, etc." - this makes it sound to me like this level is already equivalent to a four-year-old's vocabulary. Can this really be the case? A typical four-year-old already has about 4000 words, I can't imagine RS has more than a fraction of that amount.

Also worth noting, of course, that the "unsystematic" learning before this stage is almost constant, involves fulfilling real-life communicative needs, and gives massive amounts of both initial input and feedback, none of which can currently be replicated by even the best software.

[GilbertDawson]

Ah, I was being unintentionally vague here. What I mean to say is that at a certain point, RS tries to teach its students new elements of language that would just as often (or more often) be taught explicitly to L1 learners as organically. My point here was addressing abstract concepts, or complexity of language. By no means does RS come remotely close to providing the volume of linguistic data a learner receives in a real immersion environment, and I suppose with that we can add one more point against Rosetta Stone: in the interest of teaching quickly, it leaps over large chunks of select data to give its learner what it deems the essentials. (We might also add an absence of feedback, limiting the student's exploration of the language, but that kind of goes without saying.)

[jimmyanna]

Good luck my friend!