Thread: Rossetta Stone vs. Live Mocha

I was going to get a language learning software , and I am stuck between Rosetta Stone and Live Mocha . If you could give some pro's and cons , that will be good .

Rosetta Stone is alright, but it doesn't help you with grammar much at all. When I use it, I am unsure about what new vocabulary means and must look up the words in a Russian dictionary. It is good speaking practice though.

LiveMocca is useless if you are BEGINNING Russian.
It does not explain anything about the Russian grammar which definitely needs lots of explanation.
It uses the same format for all languages -- good if you are an English speaker who wants to learn French or a simple language.
Also good for Russian speakers who want to learn English.
But not if you are a beginner at Russian.

I will go back to it now, when I have improved, and try the basic-intermediate courses.
The site is great for getting your exercises reviewed, and feedback. In return, you help people learning your language.

Rosetta Stonei is a generally useless program.

I've never tried it myself, but I've heard generally bad things about Rosetta Stone.

Livemocha is good, but you can't realistically use it as your only guide to learning a language, especially one with complex grammar like Russian. You'll need to use some other resources too. (This site is a good resource!)

Yes, Rosetta stone not good at all. Don't know Live Mocha. I would go for The Princeton course which can be downloaded free. As far as books go, The New Penguin Russian Course, and Schaum's Outlines

Originally Posted by alexnoel

Yes, Rosetta stone not good at all. Don't know Live Mocha. I would go for The Princeton course which can be downloaded free. As far as books go, The New Penguin Russian Course, and Schaum's Outlines

Yes , where might I find The Princeton course . Because , anything that I can get for free would be great !!!

Originally Posted by Will

Yes , where might I find The Princeton course . Because , anything that I can get for free would be great !!!

just google 'princeton course'. It's still free, cos I downloaded it again a month ago

its on this page

FreeLanguageCourses.com

I also found Russian for Dummies a good starter

Originally Posted by alexnoel

I also found Russian for Dummies a good starter

Yes , I love Russian for Dummies !

Thanks for the Live Mocha link. Never heard of it before. It's actually useful for my russian, just been looking at it. Like the flash cards. Wouldn't use it as a stand-alone course.

The Princeton Course is great. The lessons are short but comprehensive and the author is funny.

not teach you how to say useful things that you would need when going to russia eg booking a hotel room, directions etc? Also, it does not seem to have a searcg facility on the prog so I can search for things. It's so annoying. I'm so glad that I never actually bought this software

Thanks for referring me to the Princeton course, it looks really good, so much material!

Originally Posted by Demonic_Duck

Thanks for referring me to the Princeton course, it looks really good, so much material!

glad to be of some help. I also found recently, through this site, Pimsleur Russian Course, which is audio CDs. I downloaded it. It's really good too. It must have at least 30 hours of listening on it