Rosseta Stone? Anyone ACTUALLY use it?

SheilasCoffey · Dec 21, 2009

I recommend Pimsleur if anything. I have both and I feel Pimsleur gives you the advantage only because it explains rather important parts of grammar that otherwise you will miss out on. Rosetta assumes you will figure it out. Plus its like 40 dollars at your local bookstore. While they both "challenge" you to correctly say words and make your own sentences (with rosetta stone they have their fancy voice recognition technology that I believe is absolute fail most of the times) Pimsleur you can take anywhere in your car, for a walk, heck to your job if you can get away with it. Will you sit down and spend 30 mins a day with your computer trying to learn a new language? Probably not. Don't waste 300 dollars on software you most likely won't have time to use (or maybe take a class, it would cost less).

This is for just the basic language though, not medical terms.

alem-tsahai · Dec 21, 2009

I used Rosetta Stone last year to learn French. The program is exhausting- you are always reviewing and practicing. It also takes more time then you'd think (or at least more than I initially thought). I bought level one and two over a year ago and I'm still only halfway through level two! And it's pretty expensive too.

But I have to give the program credit because it does work. I actually remembered more from those dang CDs then I did from the month I spent learning French in Paris.

There are plenty of similar programs out there though, for much cheaper. One that I learned about last year is livemocha.com. It's very similar to Rosetta Stone, and it was free last time I used it. Might be worth a try.

Justanotherday · Dec 21, 2009

If you go to LearnSpanishToday.com you can take some lessons for free to try out their program, "Visual Link". It teaches conversational Spanish. I have had it for years and love it.

Flare, ASN, BSN · Dec 21, 2009

i took a suggestion to join http://www.livemocha.com from a previous discussion here - it's an online community where you learn a foreign language and get critiqued by navite speakers of that language - you can also critique others in languages you are fluent in. If you have a micropohne on your computer (most of us do) there is a speaking portion too! I am not terribly active in it right now, but if i had more time to play with it i can see it being very useful... oh and it's free!

CuriousMe · Dec 21, 2009

I always hear that Rosseta Stone is really good. But, I always hear it second hand, "My friend said it is great"...has anyone on here used it? It is very expensive but I really want to learn Spanish. I took one Spanish class in college but don't remember any of it. The local community college offers Spanish Communication every other semester, but I work nights so its hard to schedule a class; hence the question about Rosseta Stone.

I've used Rosseta Stone, but liked another product better (it was a learning lab that I had 24/7 access to, so I had lots of chances to play around with both packages). It's called Tell Me More. Rosseta Stone, to me, seemed to rely more on rote learning exercises (which are needed to some degree....but I got bored really easy with Rosseta Stone). Tell Me More was much more interactive, again, in my opinion.

foreverLaur · Dec 21, 2009

I did use Rosetta Stone and I thought it was the best software I've ever used and it helped me a lot. I rented it from my local library though so it was FREE!! :)