Rosetta Stone has some very interesting things going for it. From being sold all over the place to their “unique” selling proposition of being the perfect way to learn a new language. I got it a long time ago, and to be honest found a bit of success.
Over the last year my study of Japanese has tapered off, well stopped. From “life” and work to forgetting to study I just got out of practice. Recently, I have gotten the bug again and decided I wanted to do something differently from normal to jump back into studying, I decided lets give Rosetta Stone a shot again.
The Good
Game LikeI think one of the strong points is it can almost be like a game at times when you are given text and spoken language and you choose a picture. It forces you to make connections and find context based on what you see. This is very good for learning vocab because you get a bit of context.
Spoken LanguageFor a long time my weakness has been, and still is, listening comprehension. While I can get phrases, and small basic words fairly simply, when it comes to any type of conversation count me out. With everything having spoken language it really helps me practice listening and has gotten my ear going again.
Level CompletionWhen I first got Rosetta Stone I could never get past Level 1 – Unit 1 – Lesson 1. I honestly thought the thing was broken. After coming back to it I zoomed through all of level 1 – Unit 1, and am now 80% of the way through Level 1 – Unit 2 with still more to go I can do. With something like 11 units for Level 1 I have a long way to go.
A Lot to ReviewI’ll be honest from a business perspective I can understand why Rosetta Stone is so expensive ($379 on Amazon at 20% off). The shear amount of content there is is staggering, and they had to pay someone to develop the content, hire speaker to speak for hours, not to mention cost of software developers. There is a lot there and I am no longer bitter about the price, just annoyed(lol).
The Bad
Repetitive Actions Granted this is the nature of the beast and how you learn in a lot of ways, but you kind of get into a bit of tunnel vision when doing it where after a while the task is so repetitive you almost forget what you are doing and just start clicking, without paying attention.
Writing System While it is awesome you can choose to review in romaji, hiragana, and kanji they don’t actually teach you anything about it. They need a quick primer on hiragana and kanji to get you started. I know they have their “context is king” mentality, but sometimes an intro is a good thing. Also wish they wouldn’t allow romaji.
The Ugly
Grammar The biggest problem there is with Rosetta Stone is grammar. While the speaker and text are using great grammar if you don’t have a basic understanding you will spend hours struggling to make connections. Even a basic review of grammar can considerably speed up what you get out Rosetta Stone, but alas nothing like that is available in app.
Conclusion
If you have Rosetta Stone, or can get it for cheap, I recommend it as a complement to everything else you do. As an all out replacement, absolutely not. I do think there is value with it, but not enough to justify the cost for those who don’t have the money to throw down for it. It might be a good buy for the jet-setter who just wants to learn another language while on a plane, but if you want to get fluent and really flourish with the language I would use other resources first.
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Thanks for the review. I’ve heard that it has improved a lot in the last few years since I tried it, but wondered how much. Apparently, not at all. People keep telling me that they now tackle grammar (I don’t know how) but your review says otherwise.
I still think $400 is a ridiculous price. Not as bad as $700, but still. They’d sell a lot more copies at a lower price, and since software is almost free to copy, that should mean more profit. At $100, I’d probably have bought a copy for some extra practice, even though I would never use it as my main source of vocab.
Also, it’s ‘complement’.
Yeah the price is still high, but I am curios as to what would happen if they sold it for $100 for one week. If they did a HUGE media blitz advertising it for only $100. I am curios if they would sell a lot. However, their business model might not be able to survive that.
Thanks for the tip on my mistake. My english is getting worse
Yeah, I could be totally wrong about how big their market is. They’d obviously have to sell at least 4x as many copies at only $100. It could be that anyone willing to pay $100 is also willing to pay $400 and they’ve made the right decision.