Rosetta Stone Latin

[jlmom]

Our local school has a license agreement with Rosetta Stone so that students who are taking languages that we don't have teachers for can learn higher level languages (Spanish 3, etc.). Through the program our dd has been able to start Latin. However I'm not thrilled with RS for Latin. I think it's a great program to learn a language if you were going to that country and needed to speak it, but for Latin I'm more interested with grammar, etc., which it doesn't seem to provide much of. Since the program is free to us to do I don't want to drop it, but I'm wondering if I'm doing more harm than good having my dd learn it (she's 6). what do you think?

[Susan in KY]

Dunno that it will harm her, BUT—my dc started Portuguese on Rosetta Stone around the same age and did it for a year or longer. They retained all but nothing, so there's not much value in it, imo, if you're not going to use it. No one speaks Latin regularly, so if you are not taking her to Latin mass or some such thing, I wouldn't bother with it.

 

Then again, I think Latin belongs in the English language classroom, not the foreign language classroom. So take what I think with an enormous few grains of salt. :)

[Swirl]

We used RS Latin for a year. A complete waste of time- we learned nothing but how to guess well. My #2 biggest curriculum mistake. I spent $200 on it too, and could not resell it (a whole other story). Even free, I wouldn't recommend it to anyone but my worst enemy.

[redsquirrel]

My son, at the age of 6, found rosetta stone latin fun. he def. got some vocabulary from it. We used it for a year when it was free online from our local public library. It doesn't teach specific grammar except by contex. But, it did give him a great deal of vocab. I felt that it gave him a head start when we started "real" Latin. He still remembers all the words he learned.

 

Would I pay for it? No. Would I consider it a particularly useful Latin course? No. But it was great for my (then) six year old son, and got him feeling positive about learning Latin.