Alioth's Journal: Rosetta Stone for language learning

So, I've been using the Rosetta Stone language course for long enough I'm doing Level 3 on their Spanish course (which I made an internet subscription to, for 3 months).

So what do I think of it so far?

It's by far the most effective way that I've found to fix new vocabulary in my mind - that's for sure, and overall, I think it's been the best thing I've done so far to bootstrap my knowledge of Spanish. However, I do have a few points I don't like... ...well, really, it's just the Milestone at the end of each unit. You have to answer it exactly, and, well, there's often more than one way of saying something which is perfectly valid so half the time you're trying to guess exactly what it wants which sort of detracts from its entire purpose. My other minor gripe is that the speech recognition isn't as great as the hype makes out, although that's not to say it is not fit for purpose (which it is). I also agree with what others have written on the 'net about the Rosetta Stone software, it shouldn't be the only thing you study - it makes it ten times easier if you also do a bit of basic grammar study as well. Fortunately, there are quite a few good web sites on Spanish grammar that are freely available.

But I'm now to the point where I can actually understand a few news articles on the BBC Mundo podcast, and on telemadrid.es, which I am extremely pleased with given that I've not even been learning for 6 months. Reading is of course a lot easier than listening, since you can re-read stuff and put any words you really can't get into WordReference. Formulating sentences of my own is still quite difficult, at least syntactically correct ones... but when I get frustrated I have to remind myself I've only been learning this for less than 6 months - and so far, I've learned more Spanish in that time than I did French in 8 years of school French.

I'm also coming to the conclusion that we teach languages totally and utterly wrong in this country. I see no evidence that the way languages are taught has changed since I was at school. There was a news article, in fact, on language teaching in Britain a few weeks ago on Radio 4's PM which sort of highlighted it - they had a 16 year old girl who had scored good marks in all her French exams but could barely string a sentence together when put on the spot. The fault, I think, is that it seems that languages are taught in schools in English, not in the language itself. So students at GCSE level are not thinking in the target language, they are thinking in English and translating. This may work fine for a written exam where you're not on the spot, but won't work for speaking and listening very well at all - and I think this probably was this girl's problem - when asked to tell the interviewer what her day was like in French, she had to think about it in English and try to translate, instead of just saying it in French. The other problem is certainly student attitude, in other countries students are probably very aware that English is the lingua franca of business (and even more so for technology, so I bet virtually every geek in non English speaking countries has good English skills) so if they don't learn it they might not get on as well later...and English speaking students know that the lingua franca of business is English, so they feel they don't need to bother learning another language...especially when it's taught at school in a way that is no fun at all, and is all about memorizing long lists of words with their English translations and nitpicky grammar points.

One thing has changed quite a lot since I was at school, is that when you're learning a new language it is so much easier to get hold of material written and spoken in the target language that's of interest thanks to the internet.

Also, I'm almost at the point where I can look up a Spanish word that I don't understand in the Spanish definitions on WordReference, instead of the Spanish - English dictionary. Once I can confidently do this, then I guess my knowledge of Spanish has become self hosting a bit like getting a compiler compiled with itself :)

rosetta

[stoolpigeon]

I've looked at it - I just wish it were not so expensive. It's the only software I've ever been tempted to acquire via illegal means.

If I really get serious about Spanish I'll have to pony up eventually though because I do hear good things about it, including what you say here.

On a humorous note, I remember a long time ago when I was living in Chicago and volunteering at the jail. I told these young guys I was thinking about taking a Spanish class at a local community college. They all la

Re:

[Shadow Wrought]

So if you speak three languages you're tri-lingual, 2 languages and you are bi-lingual. What if you only speak one language?
You're American.

Re:

[stoolpigeon]

The way I learned that one the final answer was 'stupid gringo' - but same drill.

Not just geeks

[Zontar The Mindless]

...so I bet virtually every geek in non English speaking countries has good English skills...

Here in Sweden, even the high-school kids who work the counters at Burger King and wait tables in the cafés are for all practical purposes 100% fluent in English. The reason? They start learning it in Year 4 or 5, and they likely don't graduate if they're not.

Since I've been living in Europe, I've found that German and Spanish speakers are amazed to discover that - as poorly as I speak them - I can get along in their languages *and* that I'm originally from the US. The lady whom I asked for directio