The NEW Rosetta Stone!
 

Hey all, a buddy of mine has been working with the Rosetta Stone team on their latest product which has JUST released. He tells me it's pretty amazing. Check it out, guys:

Rosetta Stone Announces TOTALe, Language Instruction With A Social Bent

and then he says this site is for games and activities and all and it's kinda like a free demo:

Welcome to RWorld!

Apparently they've been hiring tutors like CRAZY so guys, check this out a bit. The price tag is high but hey, if you're serious about "self study", this might be what you've been looking for.

I asked him about how high it goes, and he said the activities and live tutoring scales with where you are in the program, which goes to the point that you'd be conversationally fluent (which means you can get around in whatever country it is relatively comfortably).

Good luck!

(PS this isn't spam, I swear. I have no connection wth the company apart from my buddy working there, and I won't use the software myself.)

Just activated my account there.
Not many people are online though, hopefully this will improve.

It was literally JUST released; my friend is still in sleep-deprivation mode, haha!:D

Things will pick up. The reviews are starting to come in and the software will be shipping out to the stores and mall kiosks soon, I think.

The most amazing part is the one-on-one or two-on-one tutoring they have! I asked him how that's even possible and he said "we've been hiring like crazy". Wow. @_@;

hahahahahahahahahahahahaha

999$

riiiiiiight...

I'm sure it's a great tool and all. I've found the old Rosetta Stone to be extremely useful. But that's just too much money for me. Especially with the 1,200$ to continue after the introductory period. No thanks.

Christ is that how much it is? Lordie.

I guess you're really paying for the tutoring and stuff. Not like you'll be paying much less for REAL tutors, anyway... and "self study" is only so effective.

It seems like if you are paying that much your money would be better spent taking a class or actually going to Japan.

My thoughts exactly.

I've tried the original Rosetta Stone software..which costs' about $500 for the 3 courses on Japanese..and it works very very well, in fact..I should start using it, I only fooled around with it for about 30 minutes.

Haha probably. That's most of your ticket right there.

If you only used it for 30 minutes, how do you know it works very well?

It seems like people that use nothing but Rosetta Stone rave about it, but people that have used other things and then tried Rosetta Stone have a lot of complaints when it comes to learning Japanese. My sense is (having never tried to use it) that it uses a lot of picture association, which might be nice for vocabulary, but it doesn't teach hiragana, katakana, or kanji and it doesn't teach grammar. From what I understand, sentence structure in Japanese in never explained, so you have to figure out how a sentence is structured on your own. That's a lot of work for $999.

Having studied multiple languages, I get suspicious when a program says it can use a single system to teach any language. That makes me think "oversimplification" as every language is its own system and doesn't necessarily fit into a universal teaching method unless it is just boiled down to vocabulary words.

Exactly. This is why I don't use it. The only thing I can praise the old system for is vocab. The new system seems great because you get a lot more interaction. It uses the Communicative Method of learning, plus you get real tutor time. The price tag is crazy steep though, I agree. I hadn't even looked at that when I made the OP.:rolleyes:

Having actually used rosetta stone myself for more than a mere 30 minutes I can vouch for it's usefulness.
Of course you shouldn't just use one learning method, combine it with a few others!
Rosetta stone V3 teaches you a whole lot of vocab, pronunciation and teaches you how to read hiragana, katakana and basic kanji.
Of course it's all up till a certain basic level but it really helps a whole lot.

I combined it with pimsleurs and with a few books.
Rosetta doesn't cover the grammar at all as it just reads up sentences and leaves you to figure out how it works.
Just supplement that with a book on grammar and you're set.

Of course the price tag could be a tad much for students but I say the price is well worth it.
I'm not too sure about the online rosetta though... having seen the price I'll probably just try out the trial and leave it at that.

The whole original purpose of the Rosetta Stone project is to record dead or endangered languages and to entice linguistics comparison among other languages. This is never meant for ordinary people; only for linguistics or anthropology grad students.

I never used the program, but it was something I seriously looked into back when my sister was interested in coming to Japan...

I think it really depends on your attitude toward language learning. It is a total context based acquisition method - in other words, they never tell you what something means in English. You learn by repetition and context. It`s an EXTREMELY natural way to learn, and personally I think the program is a wonderful idea for those who do not have the chance to actually go to Japan or have any type of immersion course.

For those who started out with grammar and translation, it would be a real stress. They don`t tell you what something means in English (although in the demos I played around with you could eventually be tested with English.) so you have to actually learn the Japanese independent of it`s English translation. For some people this can be really stressful if they`re expecting to be able to do "this = that".

Perfect? Of course not - you`re not going to get any feedback on your own speech. BUT it`s a whole lot more efficient than watching tv and trying to pick something up if you don`t have access to a native speaker.

Exactly and that is the whole point of Rosetta Stone.
It really helps you speak the language IF you are able to associate the words and/or sentences with the situation described by the photo/picture.

I think Rosetta only get's easier in combination with different study methods.
But this of course is only my humble opinion, I have heard a lot of people complain that Rosetta is way too complex for them.
I just differs a whole lot per person.

I think you're confused. The Rosetta Stone language learning software, which is what this thread is discussing, is meant for ordinary people. (The makers of that software do also offer an Endangered Language Program for endangered language communities.) The academic project you mentioned for recording dead or endangered languages is the Rosetta Project, which seems to have no connection to the makers of the Rosetta Stone software.

Well, yes and no. The Rosetta Stone creators are the ones who run that project. However, the Rosetta Stone software you see in stores and hear people talking about, that's marketed toward users like you and me. :)

Seems that there are still people who don't know Rosetta Stone :eek:

I prefer my old-fashion ways of learning the language: actually living in that place or have a conversation-oriented independent study.

How is that old fashioned?
That still is the best way to learn the language.
I'm just saying that Rosetta Stone is probably well known as a wonderful piece of vocabulary teaching software.
I'm not claiming that it is a sub for living in Japan at all.

I started learning japanese and i' m using Rosetta Stone. There some mistakes in software like meaning of the sentence does not corespond to picture and you have to google it after. But i use genki (Integrated Elementary Japanese Course) and rosetta together so it' s been going well lately. I recommend using rosetta and some books of basic japanese (genki is very usefull).