Rosetta Stone & Learning a New Language

And now a few thoughts about Rosetta Stone: the language tool used by fortune 500 companies and the US govt for learning languages quick (or some tag line like that the advertisers of Rosetta Stone tout). Here's what you learn on lesson #1. How to say dog, cat, horse, and... elephant. Yeah, 'cause when I first land what I need to be able to say is ELEPHANT. Unless one escapes from the zoo, is running down the street, and they come past me and ask which way the elephant went, this is probably not a word I'm going to need my first day here. And if I'm at the zoo I don't need to be able to read the elephant sign. I will readily be able to accurately identify the elephant just by looking at him. Here's a word that would be helpful in lesson 1: TOILET, or bathroom. Yeah, Rosetta Stone. Where's the bathroom!? Or how about a glass of water!? I'm on lesson 12 and they still haven't told me how to find a bathroom or get a drink. If it weren't for the kindness of strangers and my wiley instincts I would be dead by now, Rosetta Stone.

What I have found useful about Rosetta Stone is how to pronounce words. I think if you spend some time on it and supplement it with some classes or a book with Chinese words it could be very useful. The whole concept is that you're learning language the way we learn naturally - like as children - where we don't know any words and we learn by conversation. Here's the thing. We're not little kids learning to talk for the first time, and we DO have a grasp of a whole plethora of words. So as you're looking at your Rosetta Stone lesson and they say a phrase, you're looking at 4 pictures and you have to click on which of the 4 pictures you think they're talking about. It took me 6 times through one of the lessons to figure out that we were talking about the color of the HAIR on the people in the 4 different pictures. (o.k., so maybe I'm a little slow on the uptake. Now that I think about it, that lesson was the one on COLORS.) But my point is you're staring at 4 different pictures, and they say a phrase, and then you sit there looking at the pictures trying to figure out what we're saying about the pictures. It would be a wonderful tool if you had a tutor or instructor in the room that you could periodically ask "what does this word mean?" Also, I need to know a few basic words before I'm ready to be forming complete sentences. A few key words and some lively sign language and I'm in business. But I must admit, after spending many hours on Rosetta Stone, now that I'm learning some individual words, all of that time I spent listening to that is really starting to click and come back to me. It's also been a HUGE help as I'm learning words with being able to pronounce them at least in the ball park. But having a driver that's very bi-lingual and a few friends that are bi-lingual is also a HUGE help.