Rosetta Stone Latin?

[AnnaM]

It is alot of money to put out on one piece of curriculum so wanted to get some input. I was thinking of starting it in the spring for my 6 and 7 year old. Any thoughts/ experiences?

[Shawn On the Border]

I'm not sure about Latin, but we used Rosetta Stone Spanish when ds15 was young- maybe 4th grade. I found it to be a little hard for him at that age. It started out fun, but he got bogged down with it fairly quickly. I would not recommend it for a typical young child, but perhaps an advanced child would do well with it.

[Dana]

We're using Rosetta Stone for Spanish.

My son had difficulty getting started with it and a lot of frustration at age 7 - and he plays a ton of computer games, so it wasn't a technology issue. He's finished up level 1 and it's a much better fit this year at age 8.

 

I do like it for Spanish.

 

I'm planning on starting with Latin next year, but I won't use Rosetta Stone. My purpose with Latin is so that he'll learn more grammar and be able to translate later on (basically training the mind) and I want a parts to whole approach. Rosetta Stone won't do that.

 

There are a LOT of threads on Latin and many are tagged, so a tag search may help with other opinions too.

[MeganW]

Have you looked at Song School Latin or Prima Latin or Minimus? Those seem to be the ones recommended most for that age group.

[redsquirrel]

My son used it at that age when it was free from the library.

 

He did get some vocabulary from it. He went through an entire lesson or unit ..I can't remember what they call it. It took a while.

 

He liked it and it was fun BUT he didn't get anything from it that he wouldn't have got from a cheaper program. He learned some basic vocab and he absorbed it well. he can still tell you all the words he learned. But he didn't absorb the grammar or the verb conjugation or anything like that.

 

I feel like we got a good picture of the ins and outs of RS. My son used it, I used it and so did my husband. When it stopped being available via the library, we didn't feel the need to pay that much to own it. It's good but not 250$ worth of good.

[jlmom]

We use it through our ps, and I don't like it for Latin. I think it would be fine for a language that you wanted to use in a particular country, but I wanted my dd to learn Latin mostly for the vocab, obviously not for travel. We stopped using it because she just got bored with it and frustrated when she couldn't pronounce something properly. I didn't want to turn her off from Latin forever.

[Targhee]

We have not used it. We actually decided to wait on Latin until 4th (next year). We have used it for Spanish. For Spanish it is lovely, immersion-based system. This has your student learning in a similar way to their first language. There is no direct translating - the attempt is to get you to think in the second language. For a spoken language that will get high use (like Spanish) I think that's the way to go!

 

The problem with using it for Latin is this: you do not learn the systematic structure (forms, declinations, etc) in a logical or structured way. I think one of main the points of studying Latin is to learn this systematic structure for its use in general cognitive development (logic, organization, structure, etc) and for its application to English grammar. You lose that with Rosetta Stone (if it's set up like Spanish is).

 

If your main emphasis is to speak Latin then Rosetta Stone will help. But to be able to accurately translate passages, read difficult texts in the source language, and to glean the benefits I mentioned above, a different approach is needed, IMO.