Thanks

marcojane
 December 26, 2010, 01:20 AM posted in General Discussion

Thank you for your help with accessing the flash cards and the nuanced meanings of "can" in Mandarin.  I'm using the flashcards on my Smart Phone which provides great practice wherever I am.  The Rosetta Stone (and I say this as a retired French and Spanish teacher) is excellent for learning the basics and a good deal of vocabulary and grammar in a way that is intuitive, BUT, it leaves a lot to be desired. As I enjoy the podcast dialogues I notice that, like pao3 bu1 vs. pao3, some of the words are different and probably not used in casual speech. A  Chinese friend also noted this from the few words I used with her.  Thank heavens for the realistic Podcast.  I've learned at least 300 words or more with RS, but can't put them together in a useful manner for a real conversation.  Podcast does that.  I think the two combined are dynamite!!  Podcast is more fun, though.  Now I have hope that I may actually be able to learn to converse  some day.  Jane

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pretzellogic
 December 28, 2010, 10:45 AM

Helpful feedback on Rosetta Stone. Thanks for that.

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tingyun

A few weeks ago I wrote a review of the new version of Rosetta Stone - http://www.amazon.com/Rosetta-Stone-V4-TOTALe-Mandarin/dp/1608299643 . In agreement with the above in that its largely a vocab learning tool - However, going further to compare it to the very high cost (over 500 dollars), I think it is a questionable choice to be included in a language program (save the money to get some 1-1 lessons or better resources). A few years ago I had reviewed the previous version, in both cases I wasn't a fan. ;)

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pretzellogic

Hey thanks for this too. I vaguely recall that you mentioned earlier you had a review of Rosetta Stone for Chinese. I remember seeing those kiosks at O'hare, LAX, Newark, SFO and Dulles and thinking that Rosetta Stone was a great marketing machine, but how was the software? I didn't think it would be that good, but I'm glad to hear from people that actually used it. I'm glad I spent the $600 on Cpod or TLI (or plane tickets for that matter).