Rosetta Stone isn't that accurate

Discussion in 'Linguistics' started by science man, Jul 23, 2010.

  1. Ok I have Rosetta Stone for Italian although I haven't done it in a while. I always like to go back to the Rosetta Stone site and check to see how they are expanding and advancing in languages. This time I wondered hmm I wonder how well it actually teaches the languages. So to test it's results by looking at the reviews of American English. They had ok spelling and ok grammar. Read the first and the third review on the high to low rating scale here
     
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  3. temur man of no words Registered Senior Member

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    You mean this? I have studied English whit differents englishsystems, all of these are very boaring.
     
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  5. for one. ya
     
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  7. Dywyddyr Penguinaciously duckalicious. Valued Senior Member

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    What's your point?
    The guy (girl) gave it 5 stars...
     
  8. yes but they're not a native so they don't know what there saying. They don't know that they weren't writing 100% accurately, As natives you and I can tell that so therefore it doesn't show that good of a result.
     
  9. Dywyddyr Penguinaciously duckalicious. Valued Senior Member

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    Pot/ kettle.
    What's your point?
    You're pointing out errors in English by foreigners while simultaneously posting the way you do?
    Hypocrisy or ignorance? I have to ask...

    And how good would your written Italian be?
     
  10. oh nevermined
     
  11. Dywyddyr Penguinaciously duckalicious. Valued Senior Member

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    19,252
    And another.
    Well done.
    You continue to make my point for me.
     
  12. Ja'far at-Tahir Grand Ayatollah of SciForums Registered Senior Member

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    English is a hard language to learn, even you (a native speaker) make mistakes and this your native language. The grammatical errors and so on of the reviews on the site don't really suggest that the program itself isn't accurate. These are just people's personal reviews of the product. I don't really think Rosetta Stone promises that they can turn any non-English speaking person into Shakespeare or something of the sort nor do they offer a degree program (that I'm aware of). It's just a program designed to help people learn a language. I don't really see why you're being so critical of it.
     
  13. kelly Registered Member

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    4
    Rosetta Stone is unique in the way that they promote learning language through interpersonal communication. (just look at their learning platform). When you say Rosetta Stone iszit really that accurate, what exactly do you mean by inaccurate?
     
  14. OnlyMe Valued Senior Member

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    3,914
    Rosetta Stone's prime objective is to provide a working understanding of the spoken language.

    A few years back I was planning a trip to South America and decided well in advance to purchase the Rosetta Stone program thinking it would be of some use. I used it religiously for almost five months and due to personal time restrictions to a lesser degree for another four months before my trip.

    It did not turn out to be very useful. From that one experience I would say if you were intending to go live in a foreign country it may be a good foundation for the language. For planning a trip it was not very useful. Much of the context was not focused on the social and cultural frame work of the western coast of S. America and the Amazon where I was traveling.

    One further problem, I never understood until I was in S. America and talking to a couple of fellow travelers who were fluent in Spanish, that the Rosetta Stone program, with good intentions in using native speakers, had included a native of Argentina as one of the native speakers. The pronunciation of some of the words was so different that it had created more confusion than benefit. When i asked them about the variation in pronunciation of one of the words in question, their comment was that the native speaker was from Argentina and should never have been included in a basic language program for Latin America.

    I imagine that people using an English speaking program might run into similar difficulties should some of the regional dialects within the U.S. be part of the basic English program.

    I did not find the program useful for travel. At least not for a three week visit. And yes it may have been very useful had I been moving to the area, as a foundation upon which to build a working knowledge.
     
  15. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    24,690
    Dywyddr's comments are appropriate. You do not write very well. It's not that you write like a foreigner, but you don't write like a well-educated American adult, with sentence fragments, rampant spelling errors, and interjections like "hmmm" interrupting the flow of words. This is the way kids write in the early years of high school.
    These days Mexican Spanish is considered the standard for Latin America, primarily because it was the first country with a major TV industry. Most telenovelas and other entertainment programs use actors who have been coached to speak with a Mexican accent.
    The equivalent standard for American English is the Los Angeles-New York synthesis that has been used on national-market news programs, quiz shows, commercials, etc., since the 1950s, when Hollywood and New York City were the broadcast centers.

    Our regional dialects are slowly normalizing to that standard as people migrate much more frequently than they used to, while their children pick up the standard dialect from TV. When I was a kid in the 1950s I found it very difficult to understand people from the Deep South. Today it's pretty easy.
     
  16. raydpratt Registered Senior Member

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    I disagree. Pimsleur language instruction materials require the learner to engage in a dialogue and to pose or respond to pieces of conversation. I love Pimsleur language materials because they are all audio and force me to really listen and imitate the sounds that I hear. I have found that more bells and whistles like computer graphs of voice comparisons really don't aid me better than careful listening and repetition.
     

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