Rosetta Stone Totale - language program with an online compontent

[altlover85]

I've been using Rosetta Stone Totale to learn French and I have gotten through level 1. I figured I would post a review of the program as I am 1/5th of the way through the program.

I am going to type out a quick pros and cons for those that don't feel like reading the whole review.

pros
a good amount of vocabulary
nice user interface
a lot of reviewing
great online tutoring sessions
helps with pronunciation and listening

possible con
The program doesn't use English. However, I find that this helps me think in the language more.

cons
very expensive ($999, but you get a no risk month to try the program out and the program includes access to all 5 levels)
very time consuming
not many people online to play games with
have to schedule online sessions a week or more in advance generally
no glossary
does not cover useful phrases in the beginning

I already have some knowledge of French from years of trying to learn on and off. I also have several years of Spanish in high school and a semester in college. Therefore I am not a total beginner.

What makes Rosetta Stone Totale more expensive than the regular program is the online component that includes lessons in small groups with a tutor. The program is about a year old.

Overall, I think the program is okay, but it requires a great deal of time to get through the lessons, if you do every activity. You can manually skip parts of the lessons if you want, but I went through and did them all.

The program has helped me improve my listening and pronunciation, but my writing and grammar are still shaky. I also have trouble with coming up with the proper way of saying certain things. For instance I might say "I want blue tie" instead of "I want the blue tie" but I think I would still be understood.

The online part of the program is okay, but not great. Signing up for the tutor sessions can be difficult because there are not many available. However, when you finally get into one of the lessons they are worth the wait, in my opinion. A tutor can interact with the screen you are looking at on your monitor and then asks you and the other people in the session questions about the images you see. The tutor will correct you if you are wrong and can type things out if you don't understand them. You are grouped with people that are of the same level as you for the sessions. The sessions are entirely in your target language and are based off the images you learned in previous lessons.

There are games in the online part of the program but I found that they are not well populated so that really took away some of the interactivity of the program. I don't know if this will improve or not.

I can't think of anything else to add right now, so I'll end the review for now. I still have more levels to do and I will keep everyone posted. If you have any questions feel free to ask me.

 

[TickTockMan]

Good thread idea. When I get the money I want to do this myself.


I'll be looking forward for updates.

 

[altlover85]

I'm still not sure if it's worth all the money, but the month that they give should help me figure it out.

I'll keep you posted!

 

[altlover85]

I finished the second level of Rosetta Stone French. It was much harder than the first and introduced past tenses and the future tense. I have an idea of how some of the past tenses work, but I also studied Spanish for a few years in high school so I am familiar with learning tenses.

In this level I learned travel information and how to ask for things when you dine. I also learned a little bit about the arts, and worked on comparing things. This level took me about 20 hours.

This time, I just did one of the studio lessons and did not play any games. The games are okay, but I got bored with them and there aren't that many people online. During the studio session with the tutor I learned a few new words, but I had to use English once when I couldn't figure out what I wanted to say. You only get 50 minutes in the session and it's usually a session with more than one student in it. Therefore, I wasn't going to waste everyone's time when I wasn't sure how to say something.

I got my headset and my CD's in the mail, but am not opening anything until I've decided if I want to keep it. This program is online and flash based.

Overall, I think it's an okay program, but I'm not sure how you could get some of the subtleties of grammar in pictures and without use of English or your native language.

I'm starting the next level today. We'll see how that goes!

 

[TickTockMan]

^ You're making me rethink if I could even learn by doing this. Especially because I have been told the languages I want to learn are harder than average.


Thanks for the update.

 

[altlover85]

Here is a link to the demo:
http://www.rosettastone.com/personal/how-it-works/test-drive

I would try it out in one of the languages you want to learn and see if it makes any sense to you.

Which languages do you want to learn and which ones do you want to learn the most?

 

[TickTockMan]

Here is a link to the demo:
http://www.rosettastone.com/personal/how-it-works/test-drive

I would try it out in one of the languages you want to learn and see if it makes any sense to you.

Which languages do you want to learn and which ones do you want to learn the most?

Thanks for the link. The languages I want to learn most are:

Arabic (Egyptian)
Swahili
Russian

The demo you just had me try only had Russian so I don’t know about the others. For Russian though it didn’t really teach me anything, it just made me use basic logic. It would show a picture of someone or of someone doing something then say what they wanted me to match. That was easy, but I still don’t know what the words were. I had a 1 in 4 chance of picking the right picture. Even after listening to the words a few times I am pretty sure I wasn’t saying them right and I didn’t know what I was trying to say anyway.


I have a feeling I would learn better in a class setting for this kind of thing.

Is the demo just like the program itself? Does it ever use English to tell you what it wants you to say?


Anyway, if you do more updates I look forward to reading them.

 

[altlover85]

I just did the Russian demo to try and get a feeling for what you just did. I did learn something, but it was harder than if they used our type of alphabet. You really have to listen a lot and look at the letters. I've found that writing things out helped me to reinforce what I'd learned. The demo only has some of the languages they offer and not all of them.

The program doesn't use English, but they do go over sounds and letters by repeating a sound and showing you the letters. It also checks your pronunciation against a native speaker, but I found that it could be forgiving to a degree. You can adjust the sensitivity of the recording.

No matter what you do, make sure you don't put too much pressure on yourself to sound perfect right away. If you find Rosetta Stone isn't for you, try www.livemocha.com. It's a free service and has a lot of languages. You can do lessons and talk with native speakers. It has a social networking feel, but you can learn something.

 

[altlover85]

I can't edit my previous post, so I'm just going to add one more thing here.

I've learned by using the program to look for changes in the spellings of words and to look for base words. For example, in English, when we want to make boy plural, we add an "s" so if you see an object or person and see more than one of them, you know you might have to add an "s" on the end of the word to make it plural. If I were learning Russian, I would look for at the word for boy and see if the spelling changed when I saw the word for boys. You might then be able to figure out how to make boys plural and how words (or at least some words) become plural in Russian.

I hope that makes sense.

I will keep you posted as I advance through the program.

 

[Georgiadude]

Thanks for the info. My bf. is Brazilian and speaks Portuguese. I've been thinking about trying Rosetta Stone but didn't know much about it. I've learned to count from 0-10 but that's about it. Now that I'm done with school I will have more time to devote to it. I don't have any spare money right now but will try and utilize some of the free online sites.

Thanks again. I will keep checking back for more updates.

Steven.

 

[altlover85]

You might also see what your local library has Steven. I've heard some of them have Pimsleur which is an audio course, which I tried the demo of online and found to be pretty good.

 

[maxpowr9]

From what my friends have said about Rosetta Stone, it is good for Latin based languages (french, spanish, german etc.) but it is VERY tough for the "eastern" languages (Japanese, Mandarin, Vietnamese etc.) because it completely ignores the writing aspect of it. Character recognition through writing, especially for Kanji, is very tough for an english speaker to grasp. You simply cannot learn Japanese FULLY (speak, write, read and hear) through a computer program like this alone. You need to supplement it with classes/tutor that is a native speaker (in all aspects).

 

[TickTockMan]

I just did the Russian demo to try and get a feeling for what you just did. I did learn something, but it was harder than if they used our type of alphabet. You really have to listen a lot and look at the letters. I've found that writing things out helped me to reinforce what I'd learned. The demo only has some of the languages they offer and not all of them.

The program doesn't use English, but they do go over sounds and letters by repeating a sound and showing you the letters. It also checks your pronunciation against a native speaker, but I found that it could be forgiving to a degree. You can adjust the sensitivity of the recording.

No matter what you do, make sure you don't put too much pressure on yourself to sound perfect right away. If you find Rosetta Stone isn't for you, try www.livemocha.com. It's a free service and has a lot of languages. You can do lessons and talk with native speakers. It has a social networking feel, but you can learn something.

I just tried www.livemocha.com and it was much better for me. Thank you for the tip. I will be playing around with this for a while.

 

[TickTockMan]

From what my friends have said about Rosetta Stone, it is good for Latin based languages (french, spanish, german etc.) but it is VERY tough for the "eastern" languages (Japanese, Mandarin, Vietnamese etc.) because it completely ignores the writing aspect of it. Character recognition through writing, especially for Kanji, is very tough for an english speaker to grasp. You simply cannot learn Japanese FULLY (speak, write, read and hear) through a computer program like this alone. You need to supplement it with classes/tutor that is a native speaker (in all aspects).

I think that was my main problem with the demo I did. Also I am a bit hard of hearing.

 

[tidimus]

Thank you again for creating this thread. For the past 4 years or more I've been contemplating getting Rosetta Stone but the cost has kept me away.

 

[altlover85]

No problem tidimus. I will update again once I finish the 3rd level.

 

[altlover85]

I'm almost done with the 3rd level, but I've recently hit a bit of a wall and a frustration point. I was really enjoying the program and found that I was learning a lot. However, I've found that some lessons teach vocabulary that is not useful in a conversation.

In Level 3, Unit 3, Lesson 4, I'm learning about hammers and nails and other tools. I almost never have that come up when I'm speaking English. I'm sure this would be different if I worked with tools, but it's really not useful otherwise.

I went to finally speak French with other people, as I've detailed in another thread and found that people understood me and I could understand them. However, I couldn't really talk about much of anything with them because my vocabulary was limited and the program doesn't stress you coming up with sentences on your own enough. Generally you just repeat after the speaker during the speaking exercises.

It hasn't been a month that I've used the program, so maybe I'm expecting a lot, but I've been going through the program very quickly and am already halfway through all 5 levels and have spent countless hours using the program and I don't have the kind of confidence I though I would have and a rather underdeveloped vocabulary.

Most people who buy the program won't have the kind of time I have to spend with the program and at this point in time I'm seriously considering sending it back and getting a refund, because of the lack of vocabulary that is useful and no explanations of grammar. The online community that is part of the Totale program is also lacking.

I'll post again when I'm done with this level, which will probably be tomorrow at this pace.

 

[altlover85]

I finished the 3rd level and while I found there was some useful information, I'm not sure how useful it would really be to someone with no prior foreign language experience. You really have to be able to pick up on subtle things like the way certain changes in spelling denote the masculine or feminine in French, or the way certain verbs are conjugated to change the tense of the verb.

I found that while I ranted about the vocabulary, it did get more useful after that one lesson. However, I still don't think they Rosetta Stone teaches the right words to get someone speaking right away. I would have introduced some conversational things around the 3rd lesson in the first unit probably.

I'm not sure if I'm going to send the program back or go on to the next level. The program is very expensive (relative to other things on the market) and I'm not sure if I really think it's worth it.

Either way, I'll keep you posted.

 

[altlover85]

I decided to send the program back. I didn't feel like the miniscule online community was worth the extra money. The program costs $999.

The program was good at teaching vocabulary, but the grammar section was lacking. French In Action which is a 1980's public television show does a better job of doing immersion as it even helps with conjugation. I think Rosetta Stone should do this as well.

If anyone has any questions about the program, feel free to ask me.

 

[TickTockMan]

^Do you think your issue is with the program itself or just for the French lesson?

Also would you be willing to try another language from Rosetta Stone or would you try another company first?