Rosetta Stone special

I couldn't find the $199 deal by bouncing around the Rosetta Stone website, but Google found it for me:

https://www.rosettastone.com/lp/sbsr/rmsitewide/?cjevent=a8b7e7e688ac11ea827a04c00a240612&clickid=a8b7e7e688ac11ea827a04c00a240612

I received FREE access to Rosetta Stone through my alumni association and felt it was not worth it, so for me the $199 deal is a total no-go.

I signed up to review Chinese prior to going there, and found that for Chinese, they simply translated the courses for other languages word for word, exercise for exercise into Chinese. This made no sense, as the content and images were very Euro-centric and there were no references to specifically Chinese places or ideas. Instead of "How do I get to the Great Wall?" you would see "Let's go skiing." (There is virtually no skiing in China.)

I was shocked that any supposedly reputable company would put out something with such a low standard of quality.

In addition, I felt the course was too much based on pictures and moved too slowly for me.

Thanks for posting the link, acraven, I forgot to include it.

Marcia - thanks for your review. Doesn't sound like their program was useful for you at all. I have been reading reviews online and they are all over the place with some loving their method and some hating it. I am afraid it may move too slowly for me as well. I have a Fluenz Spanish course, and I really like their method, but the teacher works so slowly and repeats so much that I inevitably get frustrated.

We've traveled for years worldwide and got along well by using travlang.com, foreign languages for travelers for free. Key phrases are pronounced in everything from Afrikaans to Zulu, both of which we used extensively on a trip to South Africa. The Zulu trackers were stunned that anyone would go to the trouble to learn many key phrases in their complex language. Some language courses unfortunately dwell on useful phrases like "the pencil is red". We also used google to augment the offerings and learned but never used insults and profanity in several languages, just so we'd know if we were viewed negatively by the locals, and we were a time or two.

George, very wise decision. If you try to use insults or profanity in a foreign language, I can assure you that you almost certainly will not do it properly. There are rules (most people don't realize this) for how, when, and where, to use profanity. We lived abroad for several years, and the local (mostly - well, exclusively) young men tried to show how good their English was by including plenty of profanity. And they just didn't do it right!

They mostly ended up just sounding inappropriate. And the same goes double for insults. Do not ever try to insult someone in another culture. Please.

Our library offers Rosetta Stone for free. What's better than free? Practically nothing.

I also did not like Rosetta Stone. I tried it for Italian in 2015. I wanted to be able to converse. I didn't feel like it was geared toward conversation. I could name a horse and say things like "the ball is on the ground," but I didn't have the words to ask for a table for two in a restaurant.

For German, I started with Pimsleur and found it gave me phrases useful for travel. Then I started doing live lessons with a tutor on Skype using italki for payment. More expensive, but much more helpful.

George: I have never heard of that website, I will have to check it out.

Dave: it looks like from what I've seen, Pimsleur is an audio only program, is this correct? Did you feel like it was at all difficult not being able to read along? I've heard good things about the program, but I am a pretty visual learner so I wasnt sure about their method for me.

I was very happy with Rosetta Stone. I had the German, French, and Italian language sets. These were all purchased before the current online evolution and none were subscriptions all just flat one time payments. I agree that the lessons are almost identical between the various languages, but a lot more stuck with me than I thought would. You start out with simple things, but as you go onward through the levels your conversational skills are built up. And it takes time and dedication to go through it all, this is not something you can get a month before your trip and progress to conversational eloquence. What you learn and retain sneaks up on you and I was surprised by what I could say, especially in Italian which I had zero knowledge of before using the product, and by what I could understand. Not saying I could debate political topics or anything on that level of difficulty, but I felt confident that I could function in situations where I did not find an English speaker.

And no, I have no connection to Rosetta Stone other than being a satisfied customer.

Tamara, my closest library had a Pimsleur 5-CD starter set of Norwegian. No pictures, nothing written, and it sometimes took a while to recognize what letters might be involved in the words and phrases being taught.

But a key emphasis is on pronunciation, and there’s a lot of repetition to help get it right. And subsequent discs repeated some bits from prior lessons, building on what had been covered. Not necessarily fast progression, but practice makes perfect. Students were encouraged to purchase an entire course at the end of Disc 5, so Pimsleur is certainly in the business of teaching languages. So I can’t spell things at all, but I can say (phonetically), “Hiyah forrshtorr leet Norshk” - I understand a little Norwegian!

We've done a number of the Pimsleur courses, and find them useful. We've done Spanish, Dutch, Italian, and French. Many sets do come with reading booklets. The booklets have you listen to words and phrases as you read along and repeat. Not all sets have them, though. And if you get your Pimsleur course from the library, the booklet may well be missing.

We found the booklet handiest in the Dutch course, because we had no idea how to pronounce it, and most of what we thought we knew was wrong. For example: Gouda cheese? Try "howdah" And the word that is spelled "hoe" is pronounced "who" and means "how"!

I love languages.

Tamara,

You are correct. Pimsleur is geared much more toward aural learning than visual learning. There are some visual components, but the central part of the program is listening to and repeating phrases and sentences from the target language. The philosophy is to get people using useful, meaningful phrases from the beginning.

The "profanity" reminds me of my AP Spanish class years ago.

The instructor was taken ill and left midday. So they got the Mexican exchange student to agree to "teach" our class.

She decides we need to know something useful. SO on the board she writes profanity, tells us what it means and then we all practice.

Other teachers kept "checking on her" and were so impressed with her offering this assistance. They would just look at the board and smile. Even know when I hear Spanish profanity I can't help but smile at the memory of that 16 year old teaching us all to curse! (Something our very straight laced instructor would NEVER do :) )

Thank you all for your helpful input - lots of things to consider!

Carol, I love that story! My husband learned a lot of his Spanish from classmates in middle and high school, so of course his vocabulary contains some colorful expressions.

For those still interested in the $199 lifetime offer, pls go to the Groupon page and apply a Groupon discount code. As of today, there is a 25% discount. Pretty good offer!

Babbel is also running a special: $159 for lifetime membership, all languages included. I'm having fun with the Italian right now, and will switch to French, Spanish, or Polish, depending on where we're going next (after Italy.)

I also enjoy Radiolingua's "Coffee Break" series. And of course, Pimsleur.