Language-learning software

My main criticism of Rosetta Stone is that it teaches the most technical, most formal style of Arabic (foos-ha) and disregards the glaring differences in pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary that manifest themselves in the various Arabic dialects.

Wow, lots of bashing here....

I've used rosetta stone for arabic and mandarin. It didn't make me fluent, but I learned a whole lot of nouns and verbs... Then I took classes in each and my pre-existing knowledge of nouns and verbs meant that I could focus on the trickier parts of the languages - I wasn't trying to memorize nouns and verbs while simultaneously working on tenses (or trying to figure out why mandarin has different words for "two" depending on the object).

In short, it's a great way (better than books or tapes for visual/kinesthetic learners) to get some initial building blocks, so that human instruction (which is a lot more expensive here in the USA) can focus on the things that only a human teacher can fix.

I believe much of this debate about when one best learns a language is conflating two notions: who learns fastest and who learns best. A young adult can arguably expand his vocabulary quicker, and so in say, two years in China he understands more advanced concepts because he simply knows the words for them. But a child will almost always learn better. A 5 year old would not have a large vocabulary in 2 years. Indeed this might take much, much longer as he slowly learns more advanced words through day to day experience, which is a slow process. But he would learn better. He wouldn't have an accent and he would have native grammar (which is probably most important). So yes, both answers are right in their own way, but I'm inclined to say a child would learn best.

Also, I'm inclined just to memorize colloquial conversations--dialogues written by a native speaker--and then subjugate some poor native speaker to them. My best Chinese comes when I've just memorized someone else's words. Eventually one can cut these memorized lines into smaller and smaller segments (tacking together sections of a prefabricated henhouse, as Orwell mocked) and make something that sounds good.

Does Rosetta Stone have Japanese version? Since I live in Japan, I of course don't get to see one, but I don't know whether there are Japanese version available outside Japan for foreigners wishing to learn Japanese....

I am currently learning Arabic with the aid of Rosetta Stone. I have spoken with some native arabic speakers using some of the parts of speech I have learn with Rosetta Stone with much success. Let me stress though, that these are most very simple conversations, which Rosetta Stone does very nicely. Rosetta is an amazing tool and really gets one introduced to the sound and flavor of a language (I've had comments on my good pronunciation), and some basic vocabulary.
The thing it doesn't do is exactly pointed out by Johnson. With Rosetta Stone alone, it is basically impossible to learn a language that is truly foreign. A friend of mine is using Rosetta Stone only, and he can't keep up with me at all. A grammar book, extra research, and actually speaking the language are definitely essential for an adult learning a foreign language.

@jfb1138: I think they meant hires are *initially* tested for MSA proficiency, because dialects are certainly taught/tested from there. That would make sense, since MSA is the usual jumping-off point for dialect learning for non-native speakers, at least these days (can't comment on previously). I know the military teaches a lengthy MSA course and then relatively shorter/smaller programs in a wide variety of dialects for those who'll need them. Otherwise it's too expensive and complicated a testing program for people just joining.

No need to be pedantic--Chinese means Mandarin unless otherwise indicated.

I've learned to speak languages in classrooms, but I later found I couldn't really understand native speakers that well. That takes hours and hours of listening until your brain gets used to the sounds of the language. At that point, you can filter out the words you don't recognize, fill in the gaps, get the basic meaning and participate in the conversation. I don't think software by itself can get your listening up to that level.

I teach English as a second language and my school uses this "no-first-language-no-grammar software". The students don't appear to have learned anything from it by the time they get to class, so teachers then spend a large part of the class going over grammar structures.

Also try http://fsi-language-courses.org/index.php where you can find, for free, language courses developed by the Foreign Service Institute.

These courses were developed by the United States government and are in the public domain.

If I can't get lessons, I use books and tapes. Of course, I haven't actually used language *tapes* since I tried my dad's Readers Digest German cassettes when I was 10. But somehow they'll always be tapes to me; even downloaded mp3s.

@DrRGGibbs eh, I'm going to write them off as a contrarian. I've learned both ways. When you're a child your brain is still developing. It's similar to learning to play piano when you're 5 as opposed to 25. If you believe that learning languages is easier for adults, then that’s fine…and wrong. It just contradicts my life experiences and any expat or immigrant friends. The only exceptions are adults with high aptitudes for language acquisition.

I speak three languages; the newest was learned in college. I’ll never be as proficient in that language as English, my second language learned at 6 years-old. I speak and write like a native. My father learned English in college, he’s pretty good, but by age 13 I could easily spot the few minor grammatical errors he made. And he has a noticeable accent that I’ve never had. We both started in the same country, and he’s been studying English much longer than I have.

I feel like this is a no-brainer. Ask any immigrant family (preferably educated so you can compare the time the parent’s been learning English vs. the child) and you’ll get the same results.

The biggest problem with Rosetta Stone (and all other systems not created by native speakers) is that they are essentially context-denying. That is, those first few words/phrases used in the "system" are invariably those that would have been used in the original tongue's schools (American English, for example) instead of the target tongue's schools (Levantine Arabic, or even MSA). Thus, even those "conversations" enabled by the system are answering questions not asked. To use the specific examples, a native speaker of Arabic would not begin by learning "the man eats; the woman drinks." And native speakers of Arabic don't teach it that way.

In this household of two, we're kind of proud that we can -- and do -- read newspapers in eight different languages (with only one overlap). We didn't get there through Rosetta Stone, or any other system; if there's a "system" in place at all, it's 1970s/80s DLI, which rejoiced in not having a "system" across languages.

@semuren: "At the time the US government was only testing applicants for competency in Modern Standard Arabic."

That must have been some time ago. I studied Arabic at State Dept's Foreign Service Institute starting some 30 years ago. At that time (and now) at least five Arabic dialects were taught: Maghrebi (Morocco through Libya); Egyptian, Levantine (Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine); Iraqi; and Khaliji (Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, UAE, Oman, Yemen).

@WideEyed86: try the following link; it supports my position rather than yours:

http://esl.fis.edu/parents/advice/myth1.htm

Rosetta Stone is completely insufficient to learn Arabic. It uses a comically formal version of Modern Standard (or "classical") Arabic, one which pronounces every last diacritical marking and is comparable in formality to using 16th century Shakespearean English with an American.

MSA itself is fine - news is mainly delivered (print and TV) in MSA because it is widely understood due to being derived from the Quran. But Rosetta Stone doesn't teach MSA as generally used. Short vowels are not normally written in Arabic, only long ones. Markings exist for short vowels but are sparingly used everywhere except the universe Rosetta Stone exists in. I wish the program was more useful - I'm beyond rusty now - but anyone who says they learned the language through it should be treated with *extreme* skepticism.

(And I get free access to the program through work - woe be to him who paid for it.)

I've used Rosetta Stone for Portuguese. The big problem is that it leaves you hopeless at conversation. 95% of its speaking exercises either ask you to repeat a phrase, or to say something that uses vocabulary printed elsewhere on the screen. I bought a grammar book too, but for me, the most important supplement to the software was live conversation.

At most Rosetta Stone gets you to the level of five-year-old native speakers, who probably won't have a good use of your favorite features of their language. If the Portuguese software makes only a few sentences with the future subjunctive -- is that so different from a Brazilian five-year-old?

So I came here to tout Pimsleur as a far better method for acquiring basic oral/aural skills in a language then Rosetta Stone. xquienmereceamor has beaten me to by arguing that x=Paul Pimsleur. This is quite correct. I have use both Rosetta Stone and Pimsluer and the gap between the value of the two systems is enormous. While the columnist recommends Rosetta Stone, I cannot. I might be worth playing around with but if you are serious about internalizing a basic, and practically useful, language sample Pimsleur is the way to go. Just so you do not think I am doing some product promotion, I should mention that if you are reasonably proficient with bittorrent you can find all these products the way I have. Give them a try and then go back and pay for the ones that are actually worth the price.

Once you have taken the very small step down the road that Pimsleur will open to you all you have left is a lot of time and hard work. While dictionaries, grammars and potted dialogue lessons are then a great help in expanding you command of the formalized structures of language you really need to spend time in an environment where the language being studied is a or the common method of communication, other than the language classroom. Ideal this is accompanied by being to interact with a meta-linguistically aware native speaking teacher, but often one is not that lucky. So the idea that someone is going to have a solid foundation in Arabic by using Rosetta Stone is ridiculous.

And to connect some of the other comments back to the original post along this theme, which Arabic? There was a article or op-ed in the NYT some years back when another round of stories emerged on the woeful level of language ability among US government and military personnel working in the Muslim world. It was written by a social science or humanities academic who specialized in the Arab world. He noted how, exhausted from jet lag, he once gave directions to an Egyptian taxi driver in Moroccan colloquial only to have the driver reply "Ich spreche kein Deutsch." At the time the US government was only testing applicants for competency in Modern Standard Arabic. I suppose beggars can't be choosers, so maybe Rosetta Stone will provide and strong foundation for our fellow reader after all, and what we need to worry about lies elsewhere.

I know nothing about Arabic, but to tie the question of language varieties back into the comments and what I do know a little about I have to reply to both @DrRGGibbs and @c r williams. Why Mandarin or Putonghua and not Guoyu or Huayu or Zhongguohua or Zhongwen (purists may object that it really should only be used for writing, but fact is people use it all the time to talk about talk), or biaozhenhua? All of these name for spoken "Chinese" both elide and foreground extra-linguistic difference, and, to make things wore (or better) do it differently based on (linguistic and social) context. Plus, it is a bit sill to say the tones of Mandarin when complaining that the terms Chinese obscures tonal (or other) differences between Sintic language varieties. Maybe the most neutral, though cumbersome, English term for what my two fellow commenter were talking about is Modern Standard Mandarin. This leaves argument about who exactly get to set that standard (Guoyu vs. Putonghua vs. Huayu) aside and just presumes there is ONE. And it says nothing about the truly, and often incomprehensible, variety, that all goes under the label of Mandarin in today's PRC.

@xquienmereceamor: "The brain can navigate more easily between a foreign word and an english one..." This can also give hilarious results, since one English word may require many different words to convey its different meanings in another language. (Try translating "stamp" into French, for example.)

My understanding is that the advantage of prepubescents in learning a foreign language is that they can pronounce and recognize sounds that do not exist in their native language -- much more easily than an adult can. But don't forget: it takes babies years to learn to speak their native language fluently.

Another option for learning to listen is to watch movies in the language you're learning (on DVD from your public library or Netflix). It takes a bit of study to watch and listen without subtitles, then listen with subtitles to see what you missed. Even with subtitles, recognizing the spoken words, with slang, background noise, regional accents, and fast speakers can take some effort.

There's an English language institute here in Santiago that takes the approach of "A baby learning English" as a natural process to the extreme. I know some of the ex-teachers (they never pay on time) and the stories are pure hilarity.

For this reason, I am doubtful of these kinds of approaches. I prefer a grammar book.

The "no english" paradigm is a sham; the brain can navigate more easily between a foreign word and an english one than between a word and a picture or diagram.

Moreover, although you can conceivably teach "he talks" and "she talks" using male and female pictures, how do you use pictures to explain that in arabic, "he talks" is different from "you (male) talks," which is different from "you (female) talk" and "I talk"? What will you end up with? a complete visual symbolic language for sexes, tenses, direct and indirect objects, verbal vs. nominal sentence construction, etc? You're not learning to "speak" a language, you're learning to interact with a computer program on its own terms.

Nearly the same goes for teaching beginners with "grammar" based pedagogy. Anyone can see for themselves that they do not consult a mental grammar manual to decide how to order the words in a natural sounding sentence. Do I need to understand that "da" is a third person present indicative tense functioning as a familiar imperative, that "me" is a direct object pronoun, that "lo" is a male indirect object pronoun, and that in a spanish positive imperative phrase the word order is verb - direct object - indirect object, before I can understand that the phrase "damelo" means "give it to me" ?

Finally, no worse idea frustrates adult language learning more than the seemingly sound pedagogical approach of simultaneously teaching reading, writing, listening and speaking. Thoughtful people since at least Hegel have recognized that language is essentially a verbal phenomenon. Seeing a foreign word spelled out in familiar letters introduces a surprisingly high barrier to achieving correct pronunciation. Just witness the proceedings of any 1st year college French class. And written words will never contain the vast subtleties of rhythm and intonation which are essential to any language.

So what then? Fortunately, a minor figure in 20th century linguistics, Paul Pimsleur, dismayed at the prevailing consesus that language acquisition is "really hard" and that "only children can do it," approached the question of adult language learning with some scientific method and common sense. His results: a simple method of listening and repeating which stresses correct pronunciation and quick recall, at the expense of the bloated vocabularies of most language programs, which students fail to assimilate anyhow. An all auditory system re-enforces the proper brain circuitry; elements of the language are quickly accessible in speaking situations. Once one has a vocabulary of at least a few hundred words, the learning approach can be expanded to include dictionaries, grammars, etc. It's interesting to note that once one has internalized the major aspects of a new language, increasing vocabulary is not fundamentally different from learning new words in one's native tongue.

Anyways, I don't mean to be a language product partisan. I do highly recommend those interested in learning languages check this site out:

http://how-to-learn-any-language.com

~regards

DrRGGibbs, You’re wrong. If we’re talking about formal language education, then kids are probably no better at languages than older people. But in terms of immersive learning or learning while living in another country, young children are better than anyone else—unless the child is dumb. Just ask the Asian and Hispanic children in the US who are bilingual and speak perfect English without a hint of an accent, while their parents (who may have taken English classes and may have been living in the US/UK since before their child’s birth) still speak broken, accented English.

I pretty much have hundreds of personal anecdotes that prove you wrong, including myself. But again, this is probably contingent upon the mode of transmission or language acquisition. School, independent or formal language learning: young adult (maybe) > young child. Immersive, indirect language acquisition by living in different countries: young child>>>>>>>adult, young adult, old adult, teenager, anyone above 13.
Sources: myself, friends, my parents and my parent’s friends.