Thread: Rosetta Stone?

Is this really effective?
I hear it works but does it teach you the grammar & other rules to become fluent?
The commerciales just look like basic vocabulary matching..
I won't use it for Russian myself; for another language,
but im sure other people would like to know as well.
Thanks

What I learned from people using Rosette Stone sums up to "do not".

I myself had the sample cd for various languages, including russian and german. It convinced me that you can't learn a language from that course.

Rosetta Stone is just a very expensive toy.

I managed to get a copy of it, and I really wouldn't recommend it for the price. If it tells you anything, it's been in the trunk of my car for a year now. In my opinion, rosetta stone is nothing more then a over-priced flash card program.

Here is everything I didn't like about rosetta stone:

First of all it's pretty easy to cheat at. I gave up at the numbers lesson. Instead of just 1 number at a time, it had several numbers in order, and pretty much it was too easy to just count the number of words they said to get the right answer. Or they would say a phrase that had the already learned word for woman, and there was only 1 picture of a woman. So there was no need to memorize the new word to get the correct answer. My husband who could probably on recognize 5 words in russian got a 85% on the final test for russian 1.

Sometimes it was hard to tell what the picture even was. And sometimes they would introduce multiple new words in one phrase. And they don't translate anything, so without a dictionary then you don't know what they are talking about. For example: they show a picture of a woman shopping, the phrase was woman with long hair, but long and hair were new words, and no indication that her hair was the emphasis of the picture. I had to look up the words frequently to get what they were talking about.

And another one of my pet peeves was they didn't break down the phrases so you can listen to the words separate from the phrase. And as I said previously it wasn't uncommon for several new words to be introduced in 1 question. So instead of trying to work out and remember how to pronounce 1 word, your you have to work out and remember 5 at once.

I didn't get too far before I gave up on it for books, pimsleur and a flashcard program.

I'm in the same boat. I am having lots of problems finding good material to learn with. Rosetta Stone was very bad. I'm going to give the Pimsluer a try though.

Great! well thank you for your input.
Im so glad i didnt buy it!

From what ive seen from the commercialles is that it was just like flashcards, like you had said & I was really unsure about buying it.
I need something I can use to learn fluently.

Well how about Pimsleur?
I hear so much about it but haven't seen or had any details at all.
better than RS or bad?

Pimsleur will give you a small set about 500 words to use, but you will be able to speak them and use them correctly. You will have the basic Russian needed to visit Russia, with dictionary or phrase book or some extra words. (Pimsleur will give you what is needed for ordering food, but not give you the names of most foods you want to order.)

To write this an other way, Pimsleur is solid foundation, but needs to be built on after completing the course. The strength is you will be able to speak better than most people who complete a college Russian course. It does not cover all Russian grammar nor the vocabulary need to be fully functional in Russian.

I do recommend the course. You can see the course content on this site.

Many sentences in Pimsleur sound veeeery unnatural or even odd for native speakers.

Very true. The wording can be odd and unnature in Pimsluer. The Pimsluer course works by using a limited part of Russian grammar. When the course does this, it creates some odd sentence that are very unnatural to Russian. No native speaker would say somethings this way. If you know the full Russian grammar, it makes little sense to word things like the course does at times. After Pimsleur, as a student learns more Russian, a change in wording needs to happen. I have not had a native speak say that Pimsluer spoken Russian is not understood. It might not be always natural or normal working, but understood.

I think getting person started at speaking Russian is easier with this course. (Unless you have a native speaker to teach and help with the learning.)


The Modern Russian 1 and 2 from Georgetown Press, Linguaphone Russian or Spoken Language Service's Spoken are complete self study programs. However I think it better to start with Pimsleur for learning Russian. The self study courses I list will take a student farther in learning Russian. I am not sure I would use them, without having first used Pimsluer. The weakness of the courses I listed is the words are a bit dated in some areas, but self study with them is possible. They also have many hours of native speakers on the audio.

I'm picking back up on the Pumsluer today. I used it a while back for German and the phrases are still stuck in my mind, so I'm hoping it will do the same for Russian! I have also decided to take Russian in college and hopefully continue building a strong Russian understanding. So of course, Russian is my favored choice of language. But which would you think more important: reading or comprehension first? As in speaking and listening, not writing. This always throws me off because I start reading and have no idea what I'm doing, or I will start listening and it just feels like it throws me off. Any advice there would really help my learning.

I agree with what has been posted about pimsleur and it is good for pronunciation. It is better than nothing and better than other CD systems I have heard. It will give you a head start on any college course too. i just wouldnt pay for it. It is too expensive and you can learn a language without it anyway. Get it off utorrent or something. Dont waste 700 dollars.

That's what I did.