Rosetta Stone Japanese? How many HS credits?

[Susan Kuykendall]

Dd, age 15,a current 9th grader has her heart set on learning Japanese for her foreign language credits. I'd like for her to have 2 credits, I guess basically 2 yrs worth. I noticed that Rosetta Stone has a homeschool bundle of something called levels 1-3. Would that be sufficient for 2 yrs HS credit? Would it be only 1 year? 3 years? Does anybody have a better program that we might use for 2 HS credits in Japanese? No one in our house speaks Japanese, so it will be all up to her to learn this language. How will I know if she has learned anything? She is just an average student, and learns best by doing or by seeing. Not just listening. For example, We have used Apologia Biology this year with hear holding the book and following along with the audio CD reading the lesson to her. We have a group that does labs together, this really cement sthings for her. Is there a program for Japanese out there that would fit her learning style? Should we change to another language that would have a format to fit her style better? Waht do I do?

Thanks for any help!

Susan

[Kareni]

I've no firsthand knowledge though I know others here have children who are studying or have studied Japanese. Here is an older thread that might give you some ideas:

 

I need recommendations for Japanese courses....

 

Regards,

Kareni

[Sebastian (a lady)]

Dd, age 15,a current 9th grader has her heart set on learning Japanese for her foreign language credits. I'd like for her to have 2 credits, I guess basically 2 yrs worth. I noticed that Rosetta Stone has a homeschool bundle of something called levels 1-3. Would that be sufficient for 2 yrs HS credit? Would it be only 1 year? 3 years? Does anybody have a better program that we might use for 2 HS credits in Japanese? No one in our house speaks Japanese, so it will be all up to her to learn this language. How will I know if she has learned anything? She is just an average student, and learns best by doing or by seeing. Not just listening. For example, We have used Apologia Biology this year with hear holding the book and following along with the audio CD reading the lesson to her. We have a group that does labs together, this really cement sthings for her. Is there a program for Japanese out there that would fit her learning style? Should we change to another language that would have a format to fit her style better? Waht do I do?

Thanks for any help!

Susan

 

We have RS Japanese and while I'm normally a big RS fan and have used it for other languages, I think that it has some weaknesses with Japanese in both writing and grammar.

 

There are a couple of grammar quirks with Japanese that are hard to figure out with RS. For example there are words that are used as markers with nouns. If you will, they help to tell you how the word is used in the sentence. So a word might be followed by wa if it is the subject but by o if it is the direct object. You get a sense of this in RS, but it isn't explicitly explained. (I really wish that RS came with a help button for grammar topics so you could click on one of the windows and get an explanation of what is happening and why, but I digress).

 

Also, while you can switch between kanji (Japanese characters), kana (Japanese alphabet) and romanji (transliteration using western alphabet) for the reading portion; you really only practice writing the kana. Kana is used for children's books and to spell some things out. But you still really need to start learning the kanji if you are going to progress in Japanese.

 

We live in Japan and the series that I see used for teaching English speakers is Japanese for Busy People. It comes with a CD and has a version using Romanji and a version that uses Japanese kana.

 

I'm not sure how easy it would be to use this to self teach.

 

I also have Easy Kana Workbook, which teaches actually writing the kana (RS has you matching the correct kana with the sound, but you don't learn the actual strokes). I found this at Borders.

[LivingUnderGrace]

We have RS Japanese and while I'm normally a big RS fan and have used it for other languages, I think that it has some weaknesses with Japanese in both writing and grammar.

 

 

I am a bit disappointed to hear this. :glare: I am using RS Arabic, and my son is using RS Spanish and we have been very happy so far. One of my daughters was interested in the Japanese. Thanks for the heads up!

 

For the OP, I do believe that with the new version 3, that each level is worth 1 credit. HTH (where version 2, each level was worth 2 credits)

[Yolanda in Mass]

My ds, now 19, was very motivated to learn Japanese so we tried RS. Not only was he very motivated, but he's really quite good with languages. He was so disappointed with RS and we ended up returning it. Others have gone into the specifics of RS' weaknesses, so I won't address that. But I wouldn't recommend it based on my son's experience.

[Susan Kuykendall]

I greatly appreciate all the replies, and the link to the older thread. I'm still not sure if i want dd to tackle this, but at least y'all gave me some resources and good advice!

[Sebastian (a lady)]

I am a bit disappointed to hear this. :glare: I am using RS Arabic, and my son is using RS Spanish and we have been very happy so far. One of my daughters was interested in the Japanese. Thanks for the heads up!

 

For the OP, I do believe that with the new version 3, that each level is worth 1 credit. HTH (where version 2, each level was worth 2 credits)

 

I don't mean to say that RS Japanese is bad, just that there are areas that the RS approach doesn't cover in the detail that I think you would want.

 

I think that RS Arabic has some similar issues (although I only dabbled in Arabic, so I might be mistaken). There are some grammatical constructions that are easier to understand with a written out explanation (such as having different pronouns for "I" depending on the gender of the speaker and the formality of the situation or the fact that in spoken Japanese you often leave out nouns that are understood to be referenced). There were some similar topics in Arabic where I could understand that something was different in one sentence than the other but couldn't ever figure out if the difference was because the verb was being done by girls instead of boys or because it was transitive vs intransitive verbs or something else uniquely Arabic.

 

I can't remember how writing in RS Arabic worked (and I only used Version 2 anyway). In something like German, you just type the word using the keyboard. For Japanese, you use the mouse to select the kana that you want to use (Japanese has two sets of alphabets using 30+ symbols each to spell out a consonant not just a letter sound). But for both kana and kanji, there don't seem to be lessons that teach you stroke order or that have any little tricks to memorize the kanji.

 

What you will find in many books on kanji are characters that are grouped. So you might learn tree and then learn the symbol for forest (which are similar to a couple of trees together).

 

I looked at Japanese for Busy People this morning. The intro describes it as a simplified program for those who are learning Japanese part time. It has about 30 lessons and is designed to take about 60 hours (I'm not sure if this includes the time doing the assignments) The situations are those that an adult working in Japan would often face, like introductions.

 

I understand the negative opinions that many have about RS. I'm not normally that negative and have happily used RS for several different languages, including German for my kids while we lived in Japan. I do, however, agree that there are areas that RS just doesn't cover as deeply for Japanese, largely because of the larger differences between English and Japanese than English and German or another more similar language.

 

I don't think that there are any $50 or even $100 programs that will hit everything that you need to do with language acquisition. RS isn't explicit about grammar (and in this case, writing). Many textbooks come up short on listening and conversation. I prefer to think of it in a similar way to English language arts. I have various programs for grammar, handwriting, spelling, tricky word usage and writing stylistics.

 

Good luck to everyone on Japanese.

[Susan Kuykendall]

Much appreciated!

[LivingUnderGrace]

I think that RS Arabic has some similar issues (although I only dabbled in Arabic, so I might be mistaken). There are some grammatical constructions that are easier to understand with a written out explanation (such as having different pronouns for "I" depending on the gender of the speaker and the formality of the situation

 

Yes, that is right!!! You know what, I didn't really notice it too awful much but I am using some Arabic books to help with my learning, so that is probably why the RS doesn't bother me. But, after you pointing this out, I know exactly what you are saying, and if it were not for using some written materials also, I think the Arabic would frustrate me if I used *only* RS. :lol:

[HeatherInWI]

On credits -- Rosetta Stone has said that 1 level of Rosetta Stone is equivalent to one year of college level language, so four semesters of high school level. Our plan is to have our children finish levels 1, 2, and 3 before taking an AP Foreign Language test, as the AP tests are supposed to be the equivalent of third year college foreign language. However, I'll have to check that with what LivingUnderGrace said, to make sure I'm on the right track!

Edited February 7, 2010 by HeatherInWI