Rosetta Stone

I will try to review different language products every week. My first review will be of Rosetta Stone Japanese. Although this review is for the Japanese version, I believe the software basically works the same way for all the languages they have. I believe they have the software in over thirty languages.

First Impressions: The software is definitely different from most others. The software has three levels. Each level is sold separately. Rosetta Stone does not use English as the medium for you to learn Japanese. It does not give you the English words and then tell you what the equivalent of it is in Japanese. Instead it uses an immersion method. You start off right away listening to the foreign language. It seems frustrating at first because the software just starts you off listening to the foreign language without much guidance. You click on a picture, and it will tell you whether you picked the right picture for the word you see and hear. The levels are split into different sessions. When you finish a session, it will give you a percentage of what was responded to correctly. Although the process was somewhat painful in the beginning, you do start to form meanings for the words being used. You get to see the words used in different situations. Over time, you form a meaning for the word by seeing it being used in various contexts. The different words are then used together to make sentences.

Positives: Rosetta Stone comes with a software where you can talk into a speaker. The software will then let you know how well you are pronouncing the words compared to native speakers. I think that this is a great feature for people trying to concentrate on listening and speaking as opposed to reading and writing.

Negatives: Since the meanings of the words are formed by looking at the pictures, it is important that the pictures are clear in what they are trying to convey. Some pictures are not completely clear. For example, some of the pictures have the children in mid-air. That could mean a lot of things from jump to falling. This is somewhat of a limitation. Although the meaning of the words becomes clearer after you see it in several contexts, some pictures are a bit confusing in the beginning. I believe that this is more of a limitation of the pictures themselves because it is hard to show clearly some actions. The immersion method in real life is used with people moving, not pictures. When the immersion method is applied to pictures, it is hard to show some verbs.

Lasting Impressions: We started having our oldest son, who is 5, use the Rosetta Stone software. We told him that it was a game in the beginning. He seemed to believe us that it was a game for a little bit, but he soon realized that it was a little more work than fun. He now uses Rosetta Stone every couple of days. We usually offer him some kind of prize for getting a certain score. We only have him practice the part of the software where he listens to a word, and then he chooses the corresponding picture. He has been using it for a few weeks. Rosetta Stone does seem to have taught him some new words that he can recognize. His percentage for correct answers has been going up so he is connecting the pictures to the words being spoken. Last week I also noticed that he used a phrase from Rosetta Stone. A plane was coming down from the sky, and he said “hikooki tonde emas” which I think means “plane landing” or “plane coming down”. Overall, I think Rosetta Stone is a good software for learning another language. Rosetta Stone is interactive, and even my five-year-old son is willing to use it every couple of days even though it is some work.