Rosetta Stone V3. German, Level 1, 2 & 3 :: Education by Design Store

Customer Reviews

An Amazingly Fun and Easy Way to Learn a New Language

2008-02-23
The Rosetta Stone system for learning a new language make it really fun and easy. After about two weeks of lessons, I was able to somewhat understand and speak basic German like counting, greetings, etc.

Rosetta Stone also helps with pronunciation (it makes you read works into the mic provided) which is great!

Immersive learning, but don't try the repetition mode

2008-02-01
Rosetta Stone promises learning a language by natural immersion. This is achieved by showing 4 pictures, while a speaker says a word or sentence relating to the pictures. The learner has to pick the correct picture out of the four by clicking on it with the mouse.

While this is the most basic way of using Rosetta Stone, other modes of learning are offered as well. Such as picking a picture without the text being displayed (focus on listening skill), or typing the text into an input (focus on writing skill).

It also offers a mode in which the user has to repeat the text spoken by the program. The wave modulation of the repeated text is compared by the computer which then shows a red, yellow, or green signal depending on how similar the two voices were.

This latter mode is a complete joke, however. I am am a native German speaker myself and bought this program for my girlfriend. The quality of the voice in the repetition mode is for some reason much worse than the voices in the other modes. It is high pitch, sounds computer generated, and probably was just made on the cheap. Unfortunately this also affects the recognition and I was most successful by adopting a high pitch nasal sound. While this creates some genuine fun for native speakers, it renders the mode useless for learning.

Fortunately, just listening to the speakers in the other modes and trying to repeat works well enough to learn pronunciation.

The program does what is promises. It gives you a new language from start by total immersion. While this method is less dry and more fun than grammar books and dictionaries it also suffers from some inherent problems.

While the meaning of most of the words are well introduced by pictures, more subtle concepts that are not easily described with pictures remain vague, and the exact meaning may remain hidden.

It is also not as simple to create grammatical generalizations and rules. Creating a grammatical rule set by trial and error is just a lot easier for a toddler who can spend a decade on it than for a thirty year old with limited time on his hands.

That being said, Rosetta stone is still tremendously helpful because it makes learning colorful. Used in conjunction with other books it is a powerful, quick, and fun way to learn a language.

Rosetta Stone German

2008-01-27
Very useful and easy to use. I have a background in German but don't get to use it unless we go to German speaking countries during the summer - which we do quite often. It is still extremely helpful for extending my knowledge.

a software note

2007-12-27
This product is sold as licensed software. Users will NOT be able to load it onto more than one computer. This aspect of the product is not clear from the blurbing on the Rosetta Stone website. It is a "single-user" product.
Don't think that you can share this with friends, or that it is appropriate for a lending collection.

Rosetta Stone German Level 1-2-3

2007-12-02
My daughter has been in German for Levels 1-2-3 and now AP German. She feels so much better since receiving this program. She feels she will be better prepared to take the AP German exam. She wants to learn several languages and plans to order more Rosetta Stone programs. I will purchase more of these programs with confidence.

easy learning

2008-07-07
The product enables easy learning. It is not boring and really focuses on parts like grammar and the female, male, and genderless parts. Best software used so far.

Overpriced Basics

2008-06-29
This software is incredibly overpriced for the material and does NOT have real world scenarios the way interaction in a classroom does. If you pay this much you might as well take a live classroom language b/c you will not learn language from this software!

Rosetta Stone- ??

2008-05-12
I LOVE the product when it works!! I installed it on my personal computer and it worked for a few weeks then all of a sudden--- wouldn't work anymore! I emailed Rosetta Stone tech support --- in the mean time installed on my work computie, and it works. I have to have it on my home computer though! Tech support finally emailed back wanting to know if I had resolved the problem and if not to fill in this questionaire--- now a month later STILL NOTHING!! SO Basically their tech support is worthless and to pay this much for software you would think you could get tech support! I need to buy another language now but worried I may never get the support to have it on my private computer! :o(

Do not waste your money

2008-05-05
I bought this product after reading the great reviews in Amazon and I can say that it was the worst buy of my entire adult life. The software is booooring and repetitive. It was hard to stay awake during the study. Some of the sentences were useless (The boy is under the airplane). This pattern continued for the duration of the course up to the advanced levels. It is impossible to understand the German grammar from these silly exercises.
I have checked other softwares to learn German. They all require a lot of motivation and discipline, but Tell me more and Instant Immersion are much much better than Rosetta and at a better price. Check the demos for yourself and read reviews on language softwares and you see that Rosetta is never rated as the best (Tell me more usually is).

i heart rosetta stone

2008-03-04
This is the best way to learn a new language. The microphone/pronunciation feature is my favorite aspect.