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. Firstly, as someone living here, I was impatiently trying to acquire vocabulary that I needed every day. Rosetta Stone was teaching me: "the girl, the boy, the bike, the cup" rather than expressions which were immediately useful interacting with other adults such as "How are you?
Secondly, I am already fluent in 2 languages and functional in two more. Rosetta Stone does not leverage my existing knowledge. I was diligently having to convert the lessons into extensive notes of verb conjugations, and to attempt to reverse engineer the intricate german grammar rules. I have friends here who take german classes and use Rosetta Stone as a supplement to help them build their vocabulary.
The extensive repetition enables them to naturally pick up on the gender of words and sentence structure. But, the classroom lessons are still a necessity. My husband wants to learn some german. I have suggested he use babbel. I must admit that I agree very much with this article. Rosetta can be good for the kind of person it will work with, and who will work with it. It is not magically going to teach you effortlessly I had been learning a language with various sources over the past 10 years, and even though I got an idea about the grammar and structure, and some rules, etc, I never got around to properly learning it for lack of motivation, structure, and support.
Rosetta may not have worked for me when I started from scratch, because I like and do need the grammar. But it has provided me with the catalyst I needed to put it all together and finally progress: I progressed more in a month than in 10 years!
And I use all the other resources to confirm the grammar, etc. This being said, I found the 4 teacher-led sessions a month very very beneficial and flexible. But it has a lot to do with the fact that I usually get the same teacher, and am alone in the class.
And having 1 session a week is more than enough: it forces me to progress daily and review two lessons and get a bit head in "previewing" the next ones. Finally, the iPad apps, and the Livemocha addtions, make it richer than I could want it to be. The Apps make it easy to preview a lesson, or review it without interaction, for instance while driving.
Don't do it, it is dangerous! Thank you very much for this review Donovan and for posting this content. There are Three days later it went down to I tried to get a credit but here is the problem I have tried calling it twice. The first time I waited an hour before I hung up, I am still trying to get through and have been on hold for almost 45 minutes. So here is the kicker The "money back guarantee is a scam.
They wont answer the phone, so how do you cancel it??? I'm just finishing RS Mandarin. It's my only exposure to Mandarin. I went to China two years ago after I'd done 2 levels, and got by somewhat and was also understood. I'm finishing level 5 now, with a few days left to go before I go to China for a month to study there.
I've found the program to be as described, but I haven't had trouble figuring out the grammar patterns. The one thing I did since day one, lesson one, was to take the online Studio class with a teacher once a week.
If you are patient, and willing and able to figure things out, and listen over and over, and repeat things, then take the online class a week to see where your skills are weak, you'll get a great foundation. I did try iTalki, but you need to have a certain skill level with both speakers if you're doing the free talking. After about 6 months of that and 2 years into my RS lessons I was able to switch from the pin yin of Rosetta Stone to the characters. I use the characters for all but the newest of lessons now.
I have learned many many practical phrases and went to China after one years of RS and finished only level 2 at that time I study several times a week , with a Chinese speaking tour group to sight see for 10 days, but couldn't read much.
I've used Rosetta Stone for speaking, and books and Skitter for characters. I think it's an amazing program. I reviewed the Russian level 3, as I speak Russian as well, and was impressed with it.
My once a week RS teacher often goes off script and we can have conversational Chinese. I've had her for years but she'll only do this if I'm the only one in the class, which is most of the time.
I'm very confident in my speaking ability, and consider myself an early intermediate maybe HSK 3 or 4 but I'm not too familiar with that system. I had some tech issues and also had to switch from the CD's to the new version a couple of years ago.
Personally, I like the no English parts, but have bought two grammar books to help me to confirm or reinforce what I think RS is trying to teach me. I wish they would offer higher levels than B2 in their languages. I am at a C1 or C2 level in French, and I would love to work with their software at that level.
Otherwise, I think the French Rosetta is probably useless for me. 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!!
Thanks for the review. I am right now learning spanish latin america with Rosetta Stone. I started two weeks ago and I'm already very good. I speak better Spanish than in 7 years french at school lol. I gotta say that I'm fluent in Croatian, German and Croatian. I can manage French as well.. This may be an advantage for me using Rosetta Stone as I already have a feeling for languages.
For me the whole school system never worked. What I like about RS is that they don't just force you to learn conjugation at the beginning. They just throw random sentences and words at you and day by day you just get a feeling for the language.
I can imagine learning Mandarin or Arabic is very difficult with a software but lets be honest, why would you do that? I would never try to learn any asian language with a software.
Simply because it's a total different world to me : What I really enjoy is the voice recognition, the games with other people and the live sessions. A big dislike for me are the countless repetitions. I often skip steps because its a bit annoying at least the spanish one. I recommend this program to everybody who is easy going with languages and who already speaks a second language :. Here is an inconsiderate comment about endangered language programs I have to say this was the most balanced review I found of the software.
I do also agree that it is probably best as one part of a whole for learning. I am currently learning Japanese using it, but I am not learning with only Rosetta stone. I also watch a large amount of Japanese Anime, and sporting events like Sumo wrestling so I have developed an ear for the language and I have started turning off the subtitles and am finding it easier to follow and know what is being said. My biggest issue with Rosetta stone is that there are a number of languages that are not offered that are still spoken by a large number of people.
Also that there are more than just Native American languages that are dying. Yiddish, one very colorful and culturally relevant language to many people is dying out and that would be another good one for them to attempt to create a program for. I had a friend who was from Germany and had asked him to teach me the language. I learned by going to his house and his family would speak in German to me, and only if I was really lost I'd ask for translation.
But it was all about intuition and repetition. I also picked up Rosetta Stone German Volume 1 from a friend, and how 6 years later I haven't spoke a lick of German but I remember everything from that volume 1 and only some of what I learned from my friend.
Although, what I learned wasn't particularly useful it was family stuff, started boy, girl, bread, water, drink, eat, then sentences the boy ate bread, the girl drank water, the man read the newspaper etc but I bet if I completed all the sessions, it would get more practical and a good way to learn.
But the important thing is to practice. They constantly are having sales. So my advice is research before you buy.
Also beware of any article that says they are going to give a fair review but starts off in the very first line saying you should buy this other product. They will always undersell not necessarily be negative the competition. Every person learns at different rates and through different methods. So look for companies that offer a free trial so you can experience their program before you buy Once you get the free trials then sit back and try them all out.
If one works better than the others get that one, if they all work about the same then go for the best value. I agree about the cost, but there's no need to pay full price. I'm not sure if there's any pattern to the sales, but they certainly drop the price around Christmas. Hi I enjoyed reading your review. Very well Put. I got the german. I do believe that Pimsleur is a better programme and gives you better sentence structures and real world country specific situations.
Cheers Brett. Just want to toss in my two cents here. I was lucky enough to get to try the Russian edition. To me it has been a great experience.
I actually recommend the Russian version, if you have a knack for languages, and are good at intuitively figuring out sentence structures and grammar, this product is actually very decent. My friend has tried Japanese, which seemed to be a more bitter experience, so I think the review are very thorough.
However, if I were to buy it as opposed to getting it free from work like I did, I don't think the product is worth more than USD. I bet they'd sell like crazy if they dropped the price down to this.
I liked your review. I was wondering have you ever heard of or tried Fluenz? I was wondering if that might be really good to use. Thank you!!! I don't know if this has been said already, but there is a current sale on RS. I'm using it to learn Filipino Tagalog and many of the cheaper options don't have this language. I purchased the latest version total package for USD broken up over 3 months.
This was a much more affordable option and still comes with all of the bells and whistles of the new packages. I love it. I also have friends from the Philippines that I communicate regularly with, but this program is amazing in my opinion.
I would never have bought it at full price, but if you catch the sale it's well worth it. It was on a holiday special, for Christmas.
So I suggest waiting for them to have one of these deals for what I paid was less than half the price. I am just beginning my journey so I feel It is a good start speaking for myself anyway.
I have downloaded a few podcasts from other sources on I-tunes just for a reinforcement excersizes. Here's my two cents. I have been using Rosetta Stone French and Korean for a while; while I haven't gotten too far as of yet, I have found that Rosetta Stone actually works very well for me. I am a very visual person, and seeing pictures paired with the words written in the language has helped what I learn stick. Rosetta Stone said that while taking the photos, very precise care is taken to make sure that everything is perfect.
The photos are very well done, and you do get a good feeling for the action they are performing. This is where you really see how they applied their research.
The care they took for how to represent a word without using your mother tongue in just images is obvious. But I did have one or two cases where the photos weren't helping and I had to go find a dictionary to figure out what the word meant. So I can't say that four or more images is a great way to present every concept in the world.
Once again, this highlights my frustration in how they used experts from so many fields, who don't have experience specifically in language learning. I don't doubt that images are fantastic learning tools, but they are not suited to language learning when used in this way, in my opinion.
Learning a language through multiple-choice options is not even remotely close to an immersion learning environment. There are many ways the software presents images to you. Sometimes it asks you to repeat phrases. Sometimes it explains one photo and gives a similar one with slightly different context you have to guess.
But the vast majority of your work is based on multiple-choice usually just options and process of elimination. I find it hard to express how unnatural this feels to me for language learning. But apparently Rosetta Stone's linguists disagree. This photo-centric presentation is a fundamental aspect of the learning system which I can never agree on. Since my original review, I can say that Rosetta Stone seems to have updated their photos and removed the poorly photoshopped pictures.
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. If you want to access lessons on the go, the subscription plan is your only option.
No matter what, Rosetta Stone is going to be pretty expensive compared to Duolingo. Still, Duolingo is free But if you want something more concrete, a study in found that people actually learned faster with Duolingo. The study suggests it takes 34 hours of Duolingo lessons to learn the equivalent of one college semester, but 55 hours of study with Rosetta Stone. However, the study included only one language, Spanish, and both tools dramatically increased the Spanish speaking ability of participants.
Both share some similarities, but they teach differently, and one style may be more conducive to your learning preferences. This makes learning quicker and simpler, but less immersive.
And using the target language in the thought process is one of the major cornerstones of learning it. So does it work? Only rarely. Click on the flag of the language you want to learn below to try a more practical approach and see how much you can remember after 30 minutes of study. This article is based on using Rosetta Stone Spanish 1, 2, and 3 in If you are interested in learning Japanese, you will probably enjoy our.
Click on the flag of the language you want to learn below, and start a free practical demo lesson on the next page. I wrote this review in part to inspire Rosetta Stone to the greatness that the company is capable of.
Someday they may develop software that really works. Fortunately, in response to this review and others, they no longer advertise that adults can learn like a child with their software. I commend them for that. Of course, I also wrote this review for the thousands of people who have tried to learn a language with Rosetta Stone and failed.
If you are one of those people, I want you to know that your failure is not your fault. In fact, you might even be a language-learning genius and not know it yet. Quote from Quote from 1.
Sadly, Rosetta Stone Spanish rarely works. Watch This Learn Spanish Webinar. Canadian French. Sadly, Rosetta Stone rarely works. Children learn much differently than adults do. Why I Wrote This Review I really do like the people who work at Rosetta Stone.
They are a smart and talented bunch. Would you like to:. Reviews of:. Customer service:.
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