Who is rosetta stone good for

While this is probably good for understanding local speakers, I don't believe its good for teaching beginners.. After 2 weeks of heavy use, this frustration grew to the point of returning the software. So, in my opinion its worth trying for yourself, if its a style that works for you great, if not, return it.

I think many of the very negative reviews are written by people that think it or other software will magically teach them French. All of these tools will require lots of work, patience and probably some boredom. Regrettably, I am not one of those people that appear to be a natural at languages. I saved up my measly minimum wage paychecks so I could try to learn Russian for someone I love very much.

The sales person said that was all I'd ever have to pay so very reluctantly I purchased it. This seems so sleazy and intentionally malicious and after putting such a high price on your product it seems completely unreasonable. I now view it as almost a personal goal or vendetta to make sure as many potential buyers of your product are aware of this as possible because there is no logical economic explanation for this greed after such a high initial product price.

Rosetta stone and affiliates, you have lost all of my respect. I took 6 years of Spanish in high school and college, so the vocabulary, grammar, and sentence structure are already familiar with me. I just need high level refreshers and conversation practice since I have forgotten a lot of it and will be traveling in South America. Very good review, thank you very much! As for the online sessions, apart from the included live group sessions, you can also buy additional one-on-one sessions. The online subscription also includes Rosetta World, which encompasses culturally relevant stories.

I hope this is is helpful information. Its almost comical to read all the focus on the cost of the program. What does this statement mean, I can learn the same amount of language skill from 20 hours of in-person as I would from owning and practicing with Rosetta Stone???

Since I don't own RS I can't verify, but my intuition has me doubting that. Once your 20 hours are over, they are over. Owning something gives you the option to go back and repeat, reference and share.

Some good points in the post to consider before purchasing. Thanks for the time it took to put it together. I think Ethan's comment is a good one -- in the end, the best language learning method is the one that you actually use. I took classroom Russian for four years in college and did NOT become fluent. The teachers were almost all American grad students who spent a huge amount of time speaking in English about Russian grammar.

As a result, I know a lot of Russian grammar and not a lot of Russian. I remember him yelling at us that it was disgraceful that we were in fourth year Russian and couldn't understand what he was saying, but it was true! With Rosetta Stone, I automatically know when they're sneaking in a grammatical point "ah!

Now they're showing us that nouns being used as objects have to be converted to the accusative case" which gives me an advantage,, but the fact is you can go out and buy the Penguin Russian language book and all the rules are right there and you could look them up as you went along. But it would be darn hard to sit with the Penguin book by yourself and learn to actually speak Russian!

I've used Rosetta Stone while taking Italian introductory level course in a college campus. It's useful, but I see why some people may become "frustrated" when they believe everything should be spoon fed to them when learning a language. When you start from ground zero, you want to learn the very basics.

And when people don't hear a translated version of English first, they frequently forget and can't match a "vague" picture to what they learn. I believe in order to succeed using RS you should be very alert and active while studying vocabulary and should also try having a basic Spanish, Italian or whatever language book handy in order to look up conjugations of present form, preterit form, etc etc if needed.

Another thing that would help is if you have general basic knowledge of a language. Vocab knowledge would be a biggie! I've finished all levels of Rosetta Stone and posted a video of me speaking or trying to speak my new language. I purchased Chinese Mandarin one year prior to my travel to China. This site is right on time regarding the difficulty and expense of Rosetta Stone. Pretty fair review. As a former employee at Rosetta Stone I can safely say that the system is stagnant and just doesn't work.

The strongest aspect of the system was the ability to schedule studio time with a native speaker when you complete a unit, but last year they cut the studio time from an hour to 30 minutes, and you are only allowed to attend a handful of sessions a month.

Their Reflex program, released in South Korea and Japan, focuses on teaching by rout and basically making the students memorize role play scenarios and not natural speech. The CEO has even stated that Rosetta Stone continually is non profitable despite their name brand recognition, and the fact that the system hasn't updated in years is very telling. Thanks for your review. I thought I would put my 2 cents into the ring. For the record, I am learning Swedish and have been using Rosetta Stone on and off for a few months.

It is fun, interactive and plays like a game. Of course not everyone learns the same way, but I think some people are too caught up on being perfectionists.

RS has its own schedule. You can fight it and think this program is crap, or accept it and get over the fact that you will be asked the same questions many, many times over, hidden in different units. What I found really hard is trying to decipher the grammar using pictures. This was when I started flailing prior to that, I was a super enthusiastic student. After starting Swedish classes where the bulk of the lesson is about grammar and syntax, I went back to RS and found that I finally understood, and could see in hindsight what it was TRYING to teach me, grammar-wise.

Of course a software program no matter how advanced and expensive will ever replace the value of human interaction. But it is a good place to start and as the reviewer said, a good companion to your language learning.

No one who ever learnt a language from a textbook can go to a country and expect to be fluent. I want to be taught the correct way of saying something, not the slang. That can come later when I have mastered the basics. In all, I would say RS is great for a beginner, great for building vocabulary flash card style , practicing your listening but not great for grammar, reading or writing extended text.

I have been practicing French using rosetta stone.. 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.. 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.. I think the people that do not like this program are just.. If you are a visual learner..

Rosetta stone takes care of that.. If you are older than 5, you don't talk like that. They should develop the curricula separately according to the languages. The set has all five levels. Having grown up in Texas, I'm familiar with Spanish already - pronunciation and some basic words and sentence structure. I've always been mystified at how to conjugate verbs I eat, they are eating - it makes perfect sense to me now.

What you say about the program forcing you to quickly and accurately speak a response is spot on. What I find most helpful and fun are the stories I can read using what I've learned. Much like a first grader discovers the joy of reading "See Dick. See Jane. Run, Jane, run" - it's a thrill to read and comprehend something entirely in Spanish without even pictures to put it in context. At night in my dreams, I am reviewing what I learned. I can only imagine how fluent I'll be by level 5.

It's not perfect by any means, but it is a very, very good program. One point is clear; there is no magic bullet or shortcut to learning language. One must practice frequently for a long time and ideally start at a young age. Some schools rely on video or software only thus shortchanging the children. The children instructed through video or software miss out on the natural interactions of interpersonal communication between real humans.

Use technology as a tool or supplement, but not as a replacement for the teacher. I just finished all 5 levels of French and I can say I agree with most points of the review. I had good success with RS, but I do think it depends on your circumstances and learning style.

In my case, I started about a month before being relocated to Lyon for a work assignment. The company covered the cost, so that wasn't an issue. I also had studied Spanish in school and lived in Madrid for a semester of college. So I had a lot of the foundations of romance language grammar such that I could recognize it when it showed up in French. I also began living in France when I was early in the program, so it's hard to say how much French I learned on RS and how much in real life.

I have examples of seeing things on RS after I ran into them in the real-world and the other way around. I would also say that I am a visual learner, and matching what I'm reading and hearing to the pictures worked well for me. Finally, I also worked at it. I did lessons almost every day, did the live chat sessions as I qualified for them and spent some time with the games and such.

LIke anything you're learning you have to do the work. On the point of other aides, on occasion I did refer to french.

I bought my R. I didn't download it until 6 months ago and had no problems until 2 days ago when I was suddenly unable to access it. I telephoned the help-line and was informed that my version of the R. S was out of date and that I would not be able to use it unless I downloaded the up-dated version. They sent me a link to up-date my version but after 5 hours of following their very confusing instructions and getting nowhere, I gave up. I am 62yrs old and a computer 'newbe' but I don't understand how I can be refused access to a product I have bought because it has been up-dated by the retailer.

Hi, Thanks for the review. It was one of the most indepth one I have read regarding Rosetta Stone. I am currently learning Korean, having started on and off about 2 weeks ago. To put it into perspective, I already speak 4 languages fluently, some French and very little Welsh and can understand some Spanish. I can pronounce some Korean having learnt it 2 Sundays ago when I was in bed for a day with a bad cold but have no idea what it says.

I did it using a free phone apps. I borrowed a copy of Rosetta Stone about 2 days ago and am on lesson 2. I find it quite tedious and am getting quite sick of having to guess all the time. I had a week of Welsh lessons where I was the only non native speaker with zero knowledge and ended the week by being near the top of the class. The Welsh teacher thought that it was due to my already being able to speak a few languages.

I do not think that there is any great secret to learning languages. I think there is some truth in that children learnt by guessing a lot of the time and that it pays not to question too much at first, just memorise what you are taught. However, you do need to understand and remember what things mean which I find irritatingly missing in Rosetta Stone.

You have to guess a lot of time which would be fine for a child but not for an adult. Thus far, I have not learnt anything useful after the first short lesson except that it has become tedious. I have already learnt most of the words taught thus far by watching Korean dramas with mandarin subtitles.

I had to do it by guessing and so do not expect lessons to be further guesswork. I have seen the French version which I thought was quite good. It might be that not all languages can be learnt this way or that it will be most helpful when you are already familiar with the language and is using it to brush up your knowledge.

I think that Rosetta Stone will be vastly improved by having at least a 5 minute lesson where the meanings of the words are explained at the end of every lesson, As it is, it is a hefty sum for learning a language which I feel could be put to better use.

There is no substitute for putting time into studying a language and those who think that they can get away with that by spending this amount on RS will be sadly disappointed. Rosetta Stone is a swamp!!

Had started with a purchase of a 4CD set two years ago. Am able to get back into it, now, and tried to access it on my Android. Silly me. When you call "customer service" they are of little help. Their "chat" is worthless. Found myself with their "created" e-mail address for me and a different password Yes it was as crazy as it sounds. So, yet another confused phone-call with someone who struggles with the English language.

What was a very good company and product has gone downhill very quickly!!!!! I don't get paid for fixing their broken service. Will go with a competitor I think this is a really decent, thorough review. Thank you for a great review.

I was given a Spanish edition of RS and could not use it. I gave up after 1 hour. I tried other learning material but nothing really worked but using Spanish tutoring books helped more. Because I at least have near perfect pronunciation for Spanish and Italian, it was more of an exercise in building vocabulary.

Native speakers I meet have always told me that my Spanish pronunciation is perfect. Why don't some of these courses work? Because many of us learn material in different ways and I found that not having a translation at the bottom of the Spanish material in RS ruined it for me. I have to see the words in the new language, hear it and see the translation.

I then write the new language on paper as I use it. That combination works for me. I am also now in an environment where I work with 30 Spanish speaking people. I look up words and phrases on line. I am one that never shied away from trying to create a sentence the way I think it should be. That helps. I read and write Spanish better than I speak because I can figure out the words in context in a sentence. I had lived in Spain for a year, 30 years ago and became fairly fluent but lost it when I did not use it.

Immersion with native speakers is a great add on to using structured material. Being personally tutored by a native speaker that knows how to teach is great in addition to using structured material.

I realized this year that I started thinking in Spanish with no mental translation. I would be in the warehouse speaking Spanish and the next English I heard, I automatically answered in Spanish. To make learning a language work for you, you must be determined and keep at it and try to have fun with it. Never be afraid to try it.

I viewed the demo of the French version just to get an insight into how the system works. When taking a look at the value of the program, prospective buyers would be advised to use this as a base price.

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?!!

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?

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.

I use the Duolingo app for French and think that combined with writing exercises and member community corrections on iTalki these are a good pairing. I really like the Coffee Break French free podcasts that I can listen to anytime and there are lots of idiomatic expressions that are taught although perhaps a little old fashioned perhaps in season 3 but a little too much spoken English.

The only product that I have purchased is News in Slow French and it is relatively inexpensive and if you like news, it is also informative and the two broadcasters have good chemistry. Rosetta Stone is on sale today so that is what made me look for reviews.

I like what you have suggested in terms of iTalki lessons with tutors and the 30 to 50 sessions would totally outweigh the benefit of the price of the Rosetta Stone package. I have decided to spend the money on iTalki tutoring after reading this! Let's put the cost in a little better perspective. Start with the actual price tag. As of today, you can buy levels of French, Italian, German, Spanish, etc.

And you will own it forever and can share it with whomever you want. Each level includes 4 units of 4 lessons each. Of course, if you own it, you would repeat any lessons you want and if there are two people in your family, you cut the per-hour cost in half. Or if you give up on things easily, etc. Yes, you can fly to a country that speaks your target language. But who in this country would teach you the difference between masculine and feminine words?

The subjunctive? How to use the conditional or imperfect? If you don't have a base, going to a target country is fun and you pick up things, but this is not a learning strategy. You can't learn a language on vacation for a week; the best you can hope is to make some progress if you already have a good start.

Yes, you can get 15 hours less than one-tenth the hourly content of Rosetta Stone of in-person instruction.

But how much better is a person going to be teaching you how to say "apple" or "red" or "twelve" or "I'm hungry" than a computer is? I would argue the live tutor would be worse because they don't have the stock of images to illustrate all these basics.

Even if the person is just as good, you get one-tenth the value; and if the person, somehow, is twice as good, you still only get one-fifth the value. Many of the complaints people have are valid, especially that they don't tell you things. But there is no rule inside Rosetta Stone prohibiting you from using a dictionary, looking something up on Google, or asking a native speaker.

The woman who melodramatically drove across town illustrates the point: sometimes you have to go to certain lengths to figure something out, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. I bet after all that effort and fussing, she won't forget what she learned. The thing to keep in mind is that this is one tool in your toolbox. It can and should be one of the most useful tools for a beginner, but like a hammer you still have to use it properly in order to derive any benefit.

Using it properly means: studying the content, not just breezing through it; repeating what you don't absorb the first time; being curious about the content and why things are true; and -- perish the thought -- going outside the program for an answer if you don't immediately get it.

Other tools you can use concurrently or after you finish include reading children's books, watching cartoons and movies, going on vacation to a target country, subscribing to other learning tools, getting private lessons, or -- if you're really serious! There was a lot of information given in the review however none of it really answered the only question that I was interested to find out. I currently have the RS Latin Spanish installed on my computer so I don't need a lot of talk about whether I should spend the money.

After all, I already have and am working my way through the program. More specifically how fluent should I expect to be when I finish the series. Having read what seems like 5 pages of review never seemed to answer this most obvious question.

What am I missing? Also - nice job mentioning the fact that you can get these second hand or slightly dated versions, this is quite true and they are not hard to find. What do you think of the Rosetta Stone Shared Talk website?

Any experience with this? I am going to be reviewing your website very soon on my own, keep up the great work, truly a gem of a site you have Donovan. This was a helpful review.

My only note is that you wrote that it made more since to learn casual speech prior to honorific. I purchased Rosetta Stone to learn French. The software never worked properly; I had quite a "run-around" trying to get technical support; then, all but one of the technical support personnel were not helpful; and the software has never functioned correctly. I have nearly ten years of experience teaching languages and have to say that the parts of the software that did function did not seem especially effective for reasons already noted in your article.

When I sought a refund, I was informed that it was outside the 30 day refund window and the company refuses to provide a refund - despite the horrible experience I had with the software and their personnel. So in addition to substantive flaws, the technical and customer support for the product is awful. I strongly caution folks to be very careful about purchasing Rosetta Stone products.

I know I will never do so again. Speaking for Japan, it is considered very rude to speak casually to people who are not in your inner-most circle.

People have enough trouble trying to get past the "Ugly American" stereotype because, at least if you're Caucasian, you're automatically seen as American without going and proving people right by speaking to them as though you're a close friend when you are not.

It takes a lot to get to that level in Japanese society, and even then there can be restraint. So, you might likewise consider the cultural aspect. RS isn't perfect, and I believe the BEST way to learn is by living in the country of origin for the language you want to learn, but it is definitely a great supplement, or a great basis.

What's more, children learn language based on context, and that's something I like about RS. As a child you're faced with situations where someone is telling you something and you can't make sense of what they're saying or what they're trying to illustrate to get their point across, so I think RS is right on with that. And as someone who has done both "standard" college classroom instruction and full immersion no English, PERIOD, not even in textbooks in Japan, I can say that the latter is much better for retention.

Also, as someone who has spent thousands of dollars both in the U. I agree with some of the people who said that it's too difficult or not useful for some people because they're either not the type of person who can learn with visuals and audio, or because some people are too lazy and want results now. Some people are obsessed with price and think that they need to have some results A. Price is not an indication of possible success. It takes dedication and diversification of learning methods.

I think RS is a great tool, but it needs people going into to use it with the right mindset and realistic expectations, as well as materials to supplement their learning.

You don't go into a classroom without books. I purchased Rosetta Stone to learn to speak German after moving to Munich. After many hours of working through the lessons, I gave up in frustration. What does that mean for you? As an adult learner of Spanish, for example, you will not even hear phonemes that are not in a language you already know well. In this review I am paraphrasing from a lecture by Stanford biology professor Robert Sapolsky.

I recommend that you watch at least five minutes of his lecture to see what I am talking about. You cannot learn a new language as an adult the way you learned your first language as a child. It also takes children several years to learn their first language.

They waste a lot of time doing this, even though they usually have two full-time, live-in language tutors called parents. If you copy the learning methods of small children as Rosetta Stone suggests you do , you will waste a lot of your time. They can use translations to understand the meaning the first time, without guessing. Children are especially prone to doing this. Home school families are faced with the difficult problem of choosing for example Spanish study materials for their children when neither mom nor dad knows Spanish.

In many areas of life, picking the market leader or the company with the best advertising is a good approach. But not with language learning. When your son or daughter is ready to learn Spanish, the important thing is not whether the web site is gorgeous, or who likes the program. The important thing is how much can your child remember after studying for 30 minutes.

Fortunately, this is easy to test. Have your son or daughter do the Rosetta Stone demo for 30 minutes and then have them do our demo by clicking on the flag below for 30 minutes and buy the program where they can remember more at the end of a minute lesson. The language Things are what they are, regardless of what you call them. Real language immersion is full time and hardcore exposure to a language. You can get language immersion by going to a place like Middlebury College, where you will sign this pledge:.

I understand that failure to comply with this Pledge may result in my expulsion from the School without credit or refund. You can also create a language immersion program for yourself by going to live and work in a foreign country.

Anything short of that is not immersion. Sorry, Rosetta Stone, your program is not immersion. Probably not! And this is key, especially since photos are the foundation of the Rosetta Stone online program. I'm all for political correctness. Presenting a varied cultural set of people in photos is great, especially in multicultural environments. I'm not learning Arabic right now. This doesn't help me at all and is part of the copy-and-paste use of all images across all languages.

But even forgetting this for a moment, most culture presented in the photos screams U. I want to learn their body language and their smiles. Even the culturally sensitive ones seem to be from an American perspective. For example, in one image I saw, someone is presented with a big pitcher of water in a restaurant. They don't do that in Amsterdam. My language was set to Spanish. But we see two Arabic men and two American women.

I can't imagine how many culturally irrelevant aspects of photos there are once you compare it to non-western cultures! As a non-American who has lived in different countries, I can say this is doing nothing to help you prepare for any kind of immersion. There's a good reason they do this, which brings me to my biggest pet peeve of all with Rosetta Stone:. When I was getting the live video tour, I noticed that the content of the lesson was exactly the same in Swedish as it was in Dutch.

I asked about this and it was confirmed that it's the same in Chinese, Spanish, French, Italian, German, Japanese, Russian or other very different languages. When something is drastically different, they do take that into account. But this is more out of necessity since it would be wrong to teach me that the same word counts for both as in English. Rosetta Stone has done its researched one way of presenting a language learning system and simply translated the content to every single language.

But I know many, many other courses and resources that do exactly that in a much better fashion. An English speaker learning Dutch has obvious advantages over the same person learning Chinese or Arabic. To clump learning any language together as following the same generic, identical content, photos and steps is madness. This holds no benefits at all to the user. While there are aspects of Rosetta Stone I do like, this really got on my nerves and it's one of the many reasons I can't recommend the system to people.

The one-size-fits-all content is everywhere audio, games, courses, live spoken lessons and what the whole system rests upon. Some people will benefit from Rosetta Stone. Perhaps Rosetta Stone for kids would work a bit better.

And I did learn something from this program. I had my first ever conversation in Dutch, which gave me an enormous boost of confidence. Injecting this confidence is something that Rosetta Stone does very well. Talking about blue skies and red balls made little addition to the conversations I needed to have with people.

This has always been an issue with generic courses. They try to teach you everything and in doing so teach you almost nothing that you really need. You can actually learn a language entirely by finding learning material online or in your local library. Then meet up with natives in person without needing to travel or via language learning sites.

The problem is that doing so for free or inexpensively requires that the learner be active. This was quite a long, in-depth post. But I hope you found it helpful. To sum up everything discussed, here are all the points broken down as the pros and cons of Rosetta Stone:. Fun-loving Irish guy, full-time globe trotter and international bestselling author. Benny believes the best approach to language learning is to speak from day one. THIS is how I learn a language in 3 months.

Click For Details! Full disclosure: This post contains affiliate links. Benny Lewis Founder, Fluent in 3 Months Fun-loving Irish guy, full-time globe trotter and international bestselling author. By using innovative language apps, signing up for online lessons with language schools, or tutoring sessions with a native speaker, you can start learning your target language right away. If you have been doing your research right, then there is a high chance that you probably have heard of the language learning programs offered by Rosetta Stone.

Rosetta Stone is a premium program that comes complete with amazing features that will help total beginners get a good grasp of the features of the languages they want to learn. So, if you are looking to master complex grammar points, memorize a new word or phrase every single day, and get challenging writing, speaking, and reading exercises, the Rosetta Stone platform is worth your look. Founded in , this American education technology software company has bagged numerous awards, and this is one of the reasons why many recommend Rosetta Stone to passionate language learners.

What makes it interesting is that it has well-structured lesson content, which you can easily consume based on your own pace. In addition, by simply signing up for the Rosetta Stone Subscription, you can have instant access to several languages and master them all simultaneously if you want to!

In my opinion, this is a fantastic option, especially for learners who want to get extended learning resources, several audio companion files for listening on the go, and those who do not want the hassle of getting private lessons for different languages.

Moreover, given that it has numerous activities, you can definitely boost your learning process with this app. Planning to get a Rosetta Stone course but unsure of whether it covers your target language? Unlike other platforms, the Rosetta Stone language learning software and mobile app will help you learn vocabulary, sentence structure, and basic phrases in over 25 languages including the following:.

The program teaches quite a lot, right? The Rosetta Stone languages are somewhat in the same range as those you can find from other language apps like Memrise and Busuu.

However, it is no match when it comes to the available language lessons that you can find from free learning platforms like Ling App and Duolingo.