Posts tagged Rosetta Stone

Japanese Course

By on January 13, 2011

I reached the end of Level 1 on my Rosetta Stone Japanese course yesterday!  The very last exercise really tested what I’d already learnt.  It was a series of photos showing a group of people on a camping trip taken from the point of view of the person you are pretending to be (does that make sense?).  The other people in the group talk to you and you have to think of your reply off the top of your head.  You also have to be able to ask questions yourself based on the next photo in the sequence.  I thought it was a really good exercise as it was completely speaking based so is what it would be like of you actually went to another country and had to try and interact with others.  Now onto Level 2….

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Japanese Update

By on January 3, 2011

It’s been ages since I posted anything so I hope everyone has had a lovely Christmas and New Year!

Over the holidays I’ve had more time to spend on my Rosetta Stone Japanese course.  I’m still finding it quite a hard language to learn but over the past few weeks I’ve been spending time on it every other day which is making me progress faster than when I was only working on it just once a week.  I’m not just going faster because I’m doing it more often, it’s because I don’t forget as much between each session so don’t end up having to repeat lessons more than once.

I think the immersion technique the Rosetta Stone courses works well and it’s good that the course focuses on trying to teach you the new alphabet so that you can try and read Japanese properly.  Lots of the symbols look really similar though (like the ones below) so it’s very difficult!  So far I’m finding that most of the exercises are doable but the hardest ones are when you have to say a sentence from looking at a picture with no letters or anything to prompt you.  It takes me far too long to work out what to say!  That’s something for me to work on……

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Rosetta Stone Japanese

By on November 22, 2010

My Rosetta Stone experience of learning Japanese has been improving since my last post on the subject!  I’ve spent some time on the pronunciation and seem to be getting better at it so it’s not quite as frustrating any more.

I'd love to visit Japan - how pretty does this look?

When I started to learn French and German and school, the first things we were taught to say were ‘my name is…’, ‘I live in…..’, ‘I have… sisters’ etc.  I’m finding it slightly strange that this is not what the Rosetta Stone course starts off with.  Instead, the first lesson consists of learning a few random words such as boy, girl as well as sentences like ‘the man is swimming’ ‘they are cooking’.  There doesn’t seem to be any pattern to what each lesson is trying to teach you but then I suppose that is more like real life.  If you went to a country to learn a language, people wouldn’t talk to you in topics like in a textbook.  There are also some points in the first couple of lessons where I’m not sure if we are changing tense or if the sentence structure is just different and we are still in present tense.  I’m hoping that this will become clearer as I get further into the course.

I am still open minded as to whether it is possible to learn a language from scratch using the Rosetta Stone method but I’m having fun trying so I’ll keep you updated!

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Learning Japanese

By on October 25, 2010

I’ve just spent half an hour starting my Rosetta Stone Japanese course.  It was so hard!  I don’t think I managed to pronounce anything right the whole way through the first section.  There are also 4 different alphabets you can view each word/sentence in which is just confusing.  Hopefully it will get easier when I get into it a bit but right now I can’t see how anyone can ever learn Japanese from scratch!

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Rosetta Stone Subscription

By on October 7, 2010

My subscription to the online Rosetta Stone German course is up and I’m really disappointed – it has been really helpful and not in the least bit boring.  Their immersion technique worked really well for me and I feel like I know much more than when I started the course a few months ago.  I would without a doubt recommend the Rosetta Stone courses to anyone interested in languages!

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Rosetta Stone German

By on September 23, 2010

I’m getting to the end of my Rosetta Stone online subscription now and I am really going to miss it.  It has been great to be able to practice my German every few days, even if it is only for 5 minutes or so and it has really helped me.  The main benefit I have found with the Rosetta Stone program is that is has helped me built my confidence with speaking.  Before, I would look at words and panic, not having a clue how to pronounce them, but Rosetta Stone has taught me to break the words down into groups I know how to pronounce.  It has been a kind of subconscious learning as there is no reading endlessly from textbooks!  The interactive nature of the program makes it a lot of fun to use and I my vocabulary has improved without me really trying that hard.

I would love to see whether the Rosetta Stone technique works when learning a language from scratch.  It has been immensely helpful in consolidating my knowledge of German and expanding my vocabulary but I’m not sure it would be quite so easy to use when you’ve never has any lessons in a language, especially one which is completely different to English such as Chinese or Japanese.  Maybe I’ll invest in a new subscription to find out……

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Rosetta Stone Update

By on September 5, 2010

I’ve recently found a new feature of the Rosetta Stone German course.  My pronunciation isn’t the best and I’ve realised that you can get a graph of a German person saying a phrase and then compare it to a graph of yourself saying the same thing.  Most of the time it works and helps me pronounce the word correctly but on some occasions it sounds to me as though I’m saying the exact same thing but the graphs look completely different!

I wish I’d know about it when I was taking my German class in uni a few years ago.  I only had two German classes a week and found it hard to swap from maths mode to German mode especially as once I’d finished any work I had each week for German, I just forgot about it until my next class.  Rosetta Stone would have been really helpful to use in between classes, even if it were just for 5 minutes a day.  I would recommend it to anyone in a similar situation to the one I was in!

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Rosetta Stone

By on July 25, 2010

A few weeks ago I started a Rosetta Stone online German course.  The Rosetta Stone courses work by immersing you in the language you are learning in the same way that we all learn our first language by immersion when we are little.

I’ve been wanting to try a Rosetta Stone course since I had to stop learning German as part of my degree due to a timetable clash.  So far I’m really enjoying the course.  There are no English instructions, you just learn by associating pictures to the words and sounds.   When you sign up for the course you get sent a headset which is used to help you with your speaking.  Everything you say into it is compared to a native speaker so you can see how good your accent is which is quite helpful.

When I did my German GCSE we spent a lot of time learning grammar.  I can’t really see how the Rosetta Stone software can teach you the grammar properly but I’m still very early on in the course so I might be surprised!

Rosetta Stone have over 30 different languages you can learn.  You can either buy each level of the language separately as you get better or you can buy them all in one go.  There is also the option to learn online with a 6 or 12 month subscription.

I’m really excited to keep learning German and I think Rosetta Stone will help me a lot.

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New Year’s Resolution

By on January 7, 2010

I really want to start learning German again.  I took German for GCSE and also took a class last year in uni along with my engineering modules.  It was fun to have something different to work on instead of constantly doing maths but I’m not studying German this year as I wanted to take thermodynamics instead.  Before I can teach myself anything I need to find a course.  So far, the best one I’ve found is the Rosetta Stone language course.  You get a CD which helps you learn your chosen language by recreating the way you learnt your first language – immersion in the language.  There is also voice recognition technology to help with your pronunciation which looks good as I was never really able to get the accent right!  Hopefully I’ll get round to getting the CD soon so I can start my New Year’s resolution!

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