Rosetta Stone

[sassenach]

Worth the $$? I have soon to be 6 and 8yos and while I would love them to start spanish, I don't want it to be writing intensive. All of the programs I've seen so far have a lot of writing involved. Is there anything other than Rosetta Stone? If you have used Rosetta Stone, have you found it effective?

[Ester Maria]

I'll spare you those long rants of mine and be short and clear: NO. I would have to BE PAYED, and pretty large sums, to use Rosetta Stone - not the other way round. It's one of those cases where ads and promotion by non-experts has made wonders and thus made a concept out of an, actually, truly bad product and method. It produces nowhere as good results as traditional two-stage language learning supplemented with various native-context materials (films, music, etc.). It not only doesn't produce any effective level of literacy, it doesn't produce proper conversational abilities either. I'm pretty much an "informal expert" on second language acquisition (didn't study that precisely, but it's very related to what I worked with a lot), I've seen tons of cases of post-Rosetta Stone "knowledge" of a language, I've seen the software itself, and while it's not "harmful" (some of my colleagues disagree with that though!), it's a huge waste of time, money and energy.

 

There is no easy way around it. Formal, explicit morpho-syntax instruction MUST occur at some point to produce literacy and is as important as the conversational component of the language and use in real-life circumstances. In your case I'd certainly prefer a writing-intensive program to Rosetta Stone, but I'd take it more slowly, and allow enough time on supplements that are age-appropriate and of interest to children.

[awtl]

I personally love The Learnables. It is great for kids. You don't get into reading/writing until the second book for the first level, and even then it has a very gentle approach. I've gotten it really cheap on Ebay and homeschool classifieds. Some people don't like it, but others love it. I think it depends on what works for you.

 

Here is the site: http://www.learnables.com/

[cathmom]

I'll second Ester Maria's NO. I'm a language teacher who's studied second language acquisition, and I've never met a language teacher who likes it. They must have a HUGE advertising budget and have gotten the whole world to think they can learn a language by giving them $1000. It won't happen.

 

I'll also second her not thinking it's harmful. I think it could be a good supplement but for its price.