Rosetta Stone Spanish (Latin America) Level 1-3 Set

Rosetta Stone may be the most mis-named program in existence. The *real* stone, of course, presented the same information in three different languages, permitting archeologists to crack a language they had never been able to before, based on knowing the other two.

Rosetta Stone *the language program* works on the sink-or-swim paradigm. There is no English whatsoever in the interaction. No grammatical theory, no lists of conjugations, no explanations of irregular verbs. Everything is entirely picture and repetition based, and you learn like an infant does. A picture of a plate. "Plato." A picture of a girl holding a plate. "La muchacha tiene un plato". A picture of a girl holding a plate with a talk bubble coming from her mouth. "Yo tengo un plato." And so on, through three Levels (I believe five are available), of four Units per Level, and about ten Lessons per Unit. The Lessons (up to 30 interactions) cover vocabulary, pronunciation, grammar, and so on, and older Lessons are thrown into the mix as well just to provide reinforcement. It is possible to go through a Level in a weekend if you do absolutely nothing else except eat and sleep, but I eventually found I could realistically only absorb about a Unit's worth per day, which took up a solid evening.

Pros:

- There is a voice-recognition system that continuously checks and reinforces your pronunciation, including a pop-up wave form analysis window. It cares mostly about cadence and vowels (it has no problems if you use "B" for "V" for example), but these are the things that are key to language comprehensibility.

- There is a very nice and comfortable headset included, with a microphone and earphones.

- There are writing interactions, and a set of keyboard stickies to translate your keyboard into a Spanish version (with accents and N~, etc.)

- There is an audio file "companion" set (12 disks) that can be loaded onto an MP3 player for listening practice when you're away from your computer.

- Many features are customizable, including how sensitive you want the voice recognition to be; whether you want to focus on writing, speaking, or both; and how many interactions you can get wrong before the program decides you need to repeat a lesson.

- There are online interactions, to do solo, with another online student, or with an instructor. These include stories to listen to, and games to reinforce your listening skills. This is a new feature in Rosetta Stone, and it's way cool.

- While the program can only be installed on one computer (and there's an activation process to insure this), there can be multiple "learners" in the same household, using the same program (though not at the same time, obviously).

Cons:

- The voice recognition can be frustrating at first. I found myself doing a Dracula accent so it would pick up my inflections, though eventually things calmed down. (They need a level zero, with the exaggerated vowel sounds and cadence found in baby talk).

- The endless repetition really is endless. And the audio companion is more of the same dialog. This can get really boring.

- At times, the multi-cultural pictures evoke a giggle. Sorry, but a picture of Japanese woman bowing does not make me think "Hola!'.

- The end-of-unit "milestone" interactions, which supposedly emulate a real-world conversation, are almost impossible to pass the first time around, since you have to figure out what dialog the program expects you to say.

- There are some usability issues - the key picture in the advanced match-picture-to-phrase exercises is very tiny and hard to see, and, in the sound-identifying exercise, the second presentation of the sound (the sound repeats after you've answered) comes right before the first presentation of the next sound, with no gap (confusing to the ear, especially early on).

- The program supposedly works with a 1024x768 screen, which I have, but when using this the progress bar and pause button show up under my computer's system tray unless I go into full-screen mode. (This is a genuine bug, and should have been caught in Beta).

Despite it's foibles, the program does get you up to speed really fast, with a pragmatic and immediately useful level of understanding (I have no idea what the grammatical tenses are called, but I can pronounce them). As the company suggests, compare the cost to the cost of a language class, not other programs. Because, given the constant feedback, that's pretty much what this is. Con muchos campanas y silbidos (that's bells and whistles, for you gringos).

I bought this based on reviews that I now realize were written by people "vine" who had not actually bought the product but received it as part of some Amazon vine reviewer program. I paid $500 for this because I am going to Costa Rica and I am motivated to learn Spanish. I used this program every day for a month and felt that it was tedious and boring. I do feel that I was learning some Spanish words but not language. Looking at photos of little blue eggs and seeing azul pequeno huevo may teach the words but did not seem practical or useful. I started using the fluenz program and feel that this is geared more toward adult learning. I feel that I will actually learn something that will help on my trip. I did not feel that what I was learning with Rosetta was going help me. Neither program is easy. At 55 it takes a lot of work and motivation to learn a new language.
This may be a good program for some but it was not for me. Rosetta did honor the guarantee and are giving me a full refund so I am happy I tried it.

Rosetta Stone says in a word it is all about immersion. You learn without translation. They call their program "dynamic immersion." It has 5 features:
1) Intelligent sequencing for introduction of new concepts and lessons
2) Actionable feedback (e.g. select the picture which matches a sentence)
3) Natural discovery
4) Speech recognition technology
5) Native socialization: listening to native speakers and opportunities to converse with them

There are three components of this Rosetta Stone course: Rosetta Course (interact with the computer program by typing and speaking), Rosetta Studio (live online tutoring environment), and Rosetta World (online community of learners with activities such as language games and conversations with native speakers). There are also 12 Audio Companion CD's that you can rip and use on your portable audio device. These audios reinforce what you learned in the interactive computer lessons. I didn't hear any English translations on the CD's.

For Levels 1-3, access to the online activities expires after 9 months. (Note that if you purchase a different level, online access for Level 1 is 3 months, Levels 1-2 is 6 months, and Levels 1-5 is 15 months.) I called Rosetta Stone and was told that they were just setting up the renewal system and the cost of renewing Levels 1-3 was going to be around $49. The first component of the course, the interactive computer program, has no expiration. I was told that if you purchase a new computer in a few years that you can call Rosetta Stone and they will reauthorize the software on your new computer.

Version 4 TOTALe includes several features that are not in the previous versions. There is both online and offline access. The online content includes the Rosetta World games and Rosetta Studio conversation sessions. The interactive computer course can be run offline. All of this now runs from a single icon, a single computer application. And there is the TOTALe Mobile Companion which allows you to practice anywhere using your iPod Touch or iPhone.

In the computer lessons (Rosetta Course), a speaker announces a phrase or sentence and you are shown a picture that correlates to that phrase or sentence. Then you hear the speaker announce another phrase or sentence and you are shown 4 pictures, and you must click on the picture that corresponds to that phrase or sentence. If you select the wrong picture, you get a big "X". If you select the correct picture, then you get a green check mark and the phrase then appears above the picture to help you associate that sentence with that picture. Later you'll have to select the correct word from a list to properly complete a phrase or sentence corresponding to a picture. As an example, you'll be shown a picture of a man who is jogging. The Spanish phrase at the top of the picture is "Él corre." So then one has to infer the translation from the picture. Rosetta Stone states that "intuitively, you just know what it means." You can't click on the phrase or the picture to get a translation. So one might infer that this means he runs. But one might also think he is running, or he ran, or he is a runner, or he is jogging, etc. So you may not find all of the the rules of grammar here. Also, you'll see words like esta and está, and I didn't see any way to get any help regarding rules pertaining to diacritics or accent marks and how they change the meanings of words.

I showed the course to a native Spanish speaker who also took Spanish in college. His initial impression was that Rosetta Stone appears to be targeted more to someone who has some initial familiarity with Spanish. He also indicated in some cases that he would have have chosen a different verb than what was used by Rosetta Stone to convey the meaning in the picture.