Rosetta Stone: First Impressions

Posted By Laura in Just for You, Review | 0 comments

My 14yr old been trying the Rosetta Stone course for Japanese for a month now – here’s what he thinks so far: 

Rosetta Stone, in case you are unaware, is a language learning service which can teach you over 24 different languages! These include French, German, Japanese, Greek, and Russian. The selection is huge! I will be basing my impressions on the Japanese course.

There are many different types of packages, you can order a physical CD/DVD or you can just get the TOTALe course (which is what I will be using) which is purely based online.  With the TOTALe course, you aren’t pinned to your computer, you can learn on the go with the TOTALe app too!

My first impressions were that the layout was great, it automatically themes the site based on the language that you are learning, mine depicts some sakura trees, Kanji Scripture and even a robot (because Japan is Japan) – this isn’t enhancing my learning experience, but it’s a nice touch and really gets you in the mood for the language you are about to embark on.

The lessons ( so far ) are very well structured, and focus on learning through immersion, rather than by parrot fashion “copy from the board” and I was surprised at how effective this is, I can already use a few selective phrases and make my own phrases in such a short period of time. The lessons equally aren’t just; “click the picture of (Japanese symbol for bread)” either. The lessons make you think, for example; showing you how to say “he swims” and how to say “she walks” and then it asks you how to say “she swims” this gets your brain thinking over the past few lessons to bring together your knowledge so far to create this small phrase! (although this was a very over-simplified example, you get the idea)

So, I am really impressed at the rate of progression with Rosetta Stone, compared to my 5 or 6 years of learning French in school.

As I stated at the top, this is just first impressions, so take it with a pinch of salt, my next update should be after I do my “face to face with a Japanese person” which is another service offered by Rosetta, allowing you to speak via a skype method to a native speaker of your language, I honestly can’t wait!