1. General Description
Rosetta Stone
-All levels language proficiency
-All ages
-includes variety of activities: multiple choice, dialog, vocabulary, etc...
2. Evaluation
-The program works very quickly, is easy to use and is quite reliable I had a few classes that used the program over an entire school year and there were never technical issues, crashes or stalls with the software
-The program is very technological sophisticated, and functions through a central web site.
-Activities inlude drills, and games, with rumored collaborative peer work coming soon. [link to my other call page]
-The most important feature is that it is facilitative. There are databases, spell/grammar check and authoring systems.
-The linguistic and language focused activities are vast. They include discourse, morphology, pronunciation, reading, listening, writing, and speaking.
-Rosetta Stone describes itself as including "dynamic immersion, adaptive recall, and speech recognition" among the best features and activities.
-As for teacher fit, the program if purchased as part of a liscence group it includes teacher accounts where you have access to endless amounts of data on individual L2s.
Rosetta Stone
-All levels language proficiency
-All ages
-includes variety of activities: multiple choice, dialog, vocabulary, etc...
2. Evaluation
-The program works very quickly, is easy to use and is quite reliable I had a few classes that used the program over an entire school year and there were never technical issues, crashes or stalls with the software
-The program is very technological sophisticated, and functions through a central web site.
-Activities inlude drills, and games, with rumored collaborative peer work coming soon. [link to my other call page]
-The most important feature is that it is facilitative. There are databases, spell/grammar check and authoring systems.
-The linguistic and language focused activities are vast. They include discourse, morphology, pronunciation, reading, listening, writing, and speaking.
-Rosetta Stone describes itself as including "dynamic immersion, adaptive recall, and speech recognition" among the best features and activities.
-As for teacher fit, the program if purchased as part of a liscence group it includes teacher accounts where you have access to endless amounts of data on individual L2s.
-By the same sense, a liscence allows a student to continue to log-in and use the computer from anywhere with a specalized http:// address and password and gives the software the added bonus of being easy to use and thus, learner fit.
3. Summary
I make no secret about my love of the Rosetta Stone software, and I have backed it up by investing in the company, which has so far been a success. The software is very easy to manange, I have taught L2s in a public school using this software and I believe it can help learning a second language. There are many options with the software; they sell the individual packaged software like you see at mall kiosks, you can purchase a liscence for an entire class, or the new option called TotalE (which I discussed in lenght a few weeks ago on this very blog) lets you log in again from anywhere with personal http:// address but with the added benefit of actual live on-line lessons with a real tutor via chat technology. You are limited to how many lessons, but the possibilities are growing for what CALL software can do.
The naturalist approach Rosetta Stone believes so strongly in makes managing and using the product natural as well. From the looks of the success this year on Wall Street, as well as being the product of choice for the State department (that's what they advertise), they are getting others to believe it is the right approach to CALL software as well.
Nice review. I have to admit, I have been very skeptical of Rosetta Stone, particularly their overhyped claims about how easy it is to learn a second language with their software and what a natural approach it follows. I also think it is over priced (good for stock holders though!) :-) Have you used it yourself for language learning? Your review makes me want to give it another look. And I do admit the promised interactions with live speakers could make this a really excellent product!
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