I bought all 5 levels of Rosetta French version 3, and I lambast it at every opportunity.
There is one positive item, one huge negative and one poor implementation point.
The positive is that I think the mechanism, or put another way the Rosetta Stone platform, is mostly good. The combination of visual and aural, with a relatively simple screen-is-one-concept approach, is good.
The negative for me was the actual content itself. I learned about ladders, and horses and crazy things that not once have I encountered here in Paris. It would have been helpful to learn food items, grocery store items, things folks (even tourists) would likely find useful.
I hesitate to mention this because it might not have been a Rosetta Stone objective, nor might it fit into their framework/platform. But, there were no verb tense lessons. Even just rote learning of "je voudrais ..." [I would like ...] would get you out of 80% of the conversational jams when trying to get a sandwich, or similar.
The poor implementation point is that I did not experience any good luck using their voice recognition engine. Perhaps it is because I really have horrible French pronunciation. However, isn't that the very situation Rosetta is trying to correct? I found no way to discover why it was upset with my pronunciation. It was just a very frustration experience.
I somewhat agree with the content criticism, it is indeed fairly random sometimes - I doubt I'm ever going to use the French word for 'postage stamp' or the French word for 'ladder'. I think it might have got better in this regard --- you learn a lot of words for food in Level 1 Unit 4, and I've also learned stuff a tourist would ask. Also, to be fair, I think the word for 'ladder' is only taught because it helps you learn the word for 'hardware store' later :)
There definitely are verb tense lessons if you get far enough! It doesn't teach you by rote, but that's the whole idea, I had lessons in French at school where we did rote learning and Rosetta Stone seems to be working a lot better (I feel more confident in my ability to actually speak and read) than my lessons in school ever did.
I thought that Pimsleur was basically a language podcast: i.e. unidirectional content. _Hearing_ someone speak a native language is not the same as having ones pronunciation evaluated, which is also separate from learning proper pronunciation.
But yes, after hearing all of the raving reviews in this thread, maybe I should give it a closer look.
The first lesson is free in most (all?) languages, so you can give it a try if you want. You just have to give them an email address. After the reviews in this thread, I decided to give it a try, and it seems like a nice product. I'm planning to buy the first level (Italian), and I'm now just trying to decide between the audio-only and the "Unlimited" that they've introduced recently, which throws in flash cards and some reading material.
It is "one way", but if you're able to dedicate time to it, the "they pronounce", "you pronounce" will probably work well. If you're halfway listening in the car, then it probably won't work.
Rosetta has improved quite a bit over the last few versions.
I tried a copy a few years back and wasn't too impressed, then saw it again last year and they actually had working voice recognition that judged your pronunciation! They also have an iPad version out now which seems like a great fit.
The one big thing I've noticed is that they're a bit random on what they teach you. I remember the Arabic 1 program taking quite a few lessons before teaching 'bathroom', for example.
Rosetta Stone isn't supported by most linguists who study foreign language acquisition. It is also ridiculously overpriced and never explicitly teaches even basic grammar, something which FSI points out helps almost 100% of learners.
Rosetta Stone worked great for me. I learned Russian in about 6 months, my wife says my pronunciation is perfect. Well, she wasn't my wife when I met her, and she didn't speak any english, so it was motivation enough for me to learn to speak Russian. It helps that I have someone to practice with. I'd say if you are going to be doing Rosetta Stone, it helps if you do it every day without fail for a minimum of 30 minutes a day. When I was studying, I did 30 minutes twice a day. Any periods longer than 30 minutes, and I found that my brain didn't retain as much. But, if I took that hour and split it into two sessions about 3 hours apart, that did the trick. It also helps to study right before you go to bed. Now it's not very difficult for me to speak Russian. I don't think of the english first and then translate it - I just think of the russian words and how to say what I want. Sometimes I don't know the word, and I have to describe what I want to say.
Anyway, I am at a point now that I am learning new words every day just by speaking.
