Rosetta Stone Arabic Review – In the late 1980s, founder Allen Stoltzfus envisioned a new type of language program. One that emulates natural immersion with sophisticated new computer technology that mimics the way you learn a native language, using images and sounds in context, without translation.
What followed was one of the most innovative (and controversial) language programs to ever enter the world of language learning.
Rosetta Stone Arabic Review
The program takes its name from one of the British Museum’s most famous artefacts, the Rosetta Stone. This provided important information that helped experts unlock the secrets of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics.
Everton Women Take On Rosetta Stone Language Challenge
So, is Rosetta Stone the key you’ve been looking for to unlock all your language learning needs? Read on to find out in our detailed Rosetta Stone product review.
Claiming to have “the best language learning program in the world”, Rosetta Stone has been marketed extensively for decades and is now a well-known name in the language learning industry.
The idea behind the software is to form associations between the target language and images/audio clips through a series of repetitive tests. Their teaching methodology focuses on the idea of immersion, quite innovative at the time, but a method that is certainly not unique nowadays.
Without using English and without explanation, their intention is for you to assimilate the language by forming your own patterns and associations with the images, picking it up intuitively through their gamified language software.
Installing Learn Languages App
The effectiveness of its implementation is in question and has caused quite a stir in the language learning community, which is often criticized for being too expensive and ineffective.
A subscription to Rosetta Stone gives you full access to their library of lessons, usually 10-20 units depending on the language you are learning.
*All of this additional material comes with the basic subscription, except for the training sessions, which are available at an additional cost. These sessions last 25 minutes each, are scheduled weekly, and can be shared with up to three other students. Lessons are priced according to your level and include additional lessons with a native speaker.
There is also talk of new developments currently in beta testing. For example, the “Seek & Speak” action, which will be integrated into the app, uses augmented reality to practice extra vocabulary through a treasure hunt, which allows you to point the camera at an object and get a translation into the language of destination . It is unknown exactly when these new features will become available and their practicality as a reliable learning tool.
Best Apps To Learn Arabic In 2023
So how effective is Rosetta Stone at making you “think in a new language”? Could this really be a good use of your time and money to accelerate your language learning journey? We signed up for a free account and tested a few different languages to see if it really lives up to all the hype.
Once you sign up for membership, you will have full access to their entire program. It is laid out very logically and includes all the topics you would expect to see, gradually increasing in difficulty, from Greetings and Introductions (Unit 2) to Home and Health (Unit 9). The content is enough to keep you going for quite some time.
The question style is very easy to use for beginners, even for children. Basically you just have to match what you hear with the correct image or choose the correct transcription. The questions vary a lot which keeps things interesting, sometimes showing the transcript, sometimes not which keeps you in the mood and trains your listening skills.
Each lesson will introduce new words, review them over and over, and then move on to the next set of words or verbs. At seemingly random intervals, it’ll come back to review what you’ve already learned. It helps memorize the language in your long-term memory by repeating the same words/phrases over and over.
Rosetta Stone Review: Is It Worth It?
With the app, the app can be used without Wi-Fi, giving you more flexibility to learn on the go and tailor your lessons to fit your busy schedule. Plus, many of the audio files can be downloaded to listen to on your commute, at the gym, or during your lunch break. A great way to get some extra training and review what you’ve learned.
It’s nice to see that they don’t just use the same generic images over and over, but instead draw from many different cultures and ethnicities (Native American, Korean, African American, European, etc., even images of the Maasai people!). After all, language is the essence of diversity, something that is uniquely human and shared by everyone around the world, so it was nice to see that.
Unfortunately, for all its good points, there was a lot of room for improvement. Here are some things that left us with a bad impression.
Our biggest problem with the program was the fact that the curriculum was clearly identical in all the languages they offered. They claim their content is developed by linguists, but linguists recognize the need to structure each course differently for each language rather than using the same approach for languages as diverse as Korean and Hebrew.
Buy Rosetta Stone V3: Arabic Level 1 3 Set With Audio Companion [old Version] Online At Desertcartmaldives
We see the same thing with images being recycled over and over again. It would be nice to have pictures of local food and local people instead of the same pictures that are found in all the language courses they offer. We think they missed an opportunity to delve into the culture through images and focus on culturally specific vocabulary and phrases.
This was a problem we also encountered in a competing program, Innovative Languages pod course, where the most common word list was actually a list of the most common words in English that was translated into all the languages that they offer. A circumcision that significantly devalues the course and sheds light on the lack of forethought that went into designing the curriculum.
The program attempts to provide context and “immersion” through images and individual audio clips only. In fact, there’s so much more to it when we learn through immersion. We are constantly learning from social cues, body language, situational awareness, the personality and character of those we are talking to, etc., not just an isolated big picture with a pre-recorded phrase.
It’s quite difficult to understand the context from the images alone. To improve this aspect of the course, they really need to dig deeper and provide a richer immersion experience, perhaps through videos, dialogues, street interviews, film clips, etc.
The Ultimate Rosetta Stone Review
It is very difficult to learn grammar using only Rosetta Stone. The program introduces many new concepts and phrases without explaining how language works, its internal rules or structures. At some points, a line or two would have made a huge difference, but instead you are left in the dark, often with unanswered questions. The “context” provided is simply not enough to work through complex tenses and tenses, especially for languages completely different from English, such as Japanese or Urdu.
With no prior knowledge of the language, you will likely spend most of the lessons confused, without proper explanations. Likewise, you won’t find anything in the pronunciation. While the audio is very clean, there’s no advice on how to actually get these sounds just like you might find in other apps. And as for writing, it’s highly unlikely that you’ll learn to read and write Arabic or Chinese without any instruction. Just being familiar with the script in context doesn’t cut it.
Speech recognition software will often mark you as correct even if you made a mistake, and likewise can mark you even if you know your pronunciation was good. Because of this, you can’t rely on software alone to correct your pronunciation. This forces you to speak under pressure, which is good to say the least, as not all language programs focus enough on speaking, and repeating what you’ve been taught helps you remember the language better.
The overall process is time consuming and feels very repetitive. It may take some time to decipher the meaning of the images. For example, in the first lesson you will learn how to connect a sentence with a girl running in the park with balloons. Let’s say he’s teaching us the verb “to run,” but it could very well mean something about hot air balloons or being in a park.
Source Code: 200 Yrs On,see How The Rosetta Stone Altered Views Of Ancient Egypt
Most languages don’t have direct translations into English, and images sometimes add even more ambiguity, making things even more complicated. Also, you are often presented with several verbs and vocabulary at the same time, which makes everything too complicated. The lessons are long, 30 minutes each. And doing the same exercises for the whole class, not to mention the whole course, can get really boring.
Maybe because of how the curriculum was designed (or