Studying a foreign language can be highly beneficial in the real world.
Managers might review resumes and applications, and invite you to come in for an interview afterwards. During the interview, you’ll be asked questions about yourself so that they can better understand who you are. One of these might be, “Do you speak any other languages?”
High school students often take some foreign language courses as part of elective credits before graduation. Some continue this education into college, but is it really thorough teaching and learning?
Many books, audio tapes and CDs, and computer games have been made to enhance learning. However, Rosetta Stone has been deemed the most effective program.
Rosetta Stone is language-learning software produced by Rosetta Stone, Ltd. Its title and its logo are an allusion to the Rosetta Stone, an artifact inscribed in multiple languages that helped researchers to decipher Ancient Egyptian by comparing it to the Greek inscription.
The Rosetta Stone software utilizes a combination of images, text, and sound, with difficulty levels increasing as the student progresses, in order to teach various vocabulary terms and grammatical functions intuitively, without drills or translation. Their method is called the Dynamic Immersion method. The goal is to teach languages the way first languages are learned.
The program is available in 31 languages including Arabic, French, Chinese (Mandarin), Spanish , Russian, Latin, Japanese, and more.
Rosetta Stone can be used at any computer, and can be used in the comfort and privacy of your own home! You can learn a new language quickly and effectively, and the progress you make when you use it is smooth and fun learning that doesn’t seem like work.
As impressive as the Rosetta Stone program is, it also has a couple of faults to it. One is that when using formal language constructs, the program fails at teaching culturally relevant material and everyday slang. Travelers who have used Rosetta Stone may not use “currently appropriate” words and terminology, though they will still be understood. A second disadvantage is in the lessons where the images may have ambiguous meaning. Some users may benefit more by using a book or online translation material in order to help understand meanings.
The Rosetta Stone program requires users to invest time into learning and absorbing the information from the lessons. Although learning may seem to start out slowly, users will soon be surprised at how quickly they will comprehend basic written text and conversation.
This product is not for travelers who simply want to learn a few words and phrases. Rosetta Stone is more than that, preparing people to participate in basic to intermediate-level conversations as well as reading a variety of signs, menus, and newspapers.
The Wall Street Journal reviews Rosetta Stone: “We found ourselves catching onto words and phrases by association-just from seeing a photo, hearing a pronunciation, and figuring out what a certain phrase meant. The more familiar we became with each language, the easier it was to grasp the self-guided lessons.”
The Rosetta Stone website provides testimonials and demonstrations, as well as links that direct you to purchasing the software.
