Is Rosetta Stone for old man?

Contrary to popular stereotypes, older adults can be good foreign language learners. The difficulties older adults often experience in the language classroom can be overcome through adjustments in the learning environment, attention to affective factors, and use of effective teaching methods.

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Small children do many things better than adults. My 5-year-old son is better at getting attention from women than I am, he is better at falling asleep in improbable places, and he is better at getting his way. But there's one skill every small child has that adults rightly envy: They're brilliant language-learners. Any kid, with no formal instruction whatsoever, is capable of near-perfect pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammar in a language that was utterly foreign to them not long before. Even the best teenage or adult foreign-language students sound clunky by contrast.
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There is a software package, though, that promises to make us all kids again. Rosetta Stone, which is now being marketed massively in airports, bookstores, and high-end magazines, represents an unusual approach to language-learning. Rosetta Stone uses no English-language instruction—

in fact, no instruction at all. There are no vocabulary lists, conjugation tables, or translation drills. Instead, it mimics language immersion by associating language with pictures. Rosetta Stone doesn't put it this way, but the program asks you to learn like a child.

Rosetta Stone software includes native-speaker audio, text and the new Level 3 even focuses on video. There are a number of basic exercises that focus on a combination of skills such as reading and writing over listening and speaking or vice versa. There is also a voice recognition feature to aid in learning proper pronunciation.

You can choose which units and exercises you want to study, or you can just let the software take you on its guided tour through the whole course. It's really pretty flexible. This means the student can focus more on weak points to improve them, and you can work at your own pace.

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Rosetta Stone also offers an online subscription. Rather than buy the software, you can have a monthly subscription and access the software from any internet-capable computer. It is a more affordable and flexible option that might appeal to some.

The best way to know for sure if Rosetta Stone is right for you is to view their online demo. Try it for yourself so you can see if it fits your learning style.

There are some languages where Rosetta Stone may be the best option to learn. Very few publishers make a language product for Pashto, Hindi, Polish, Thai, Turkish and Vietnamese. These languages are all available for Level 1. There is also a Level 1 and 2 for Farsi, Tagalog and Dutch which has surprisingly few commercial products available.

Rosetta Stone software is available for 28 different languages, from Spanish to Swahili. I tested out the Danish version. It's a language of moderate difficulty for English speakers, but since it's a Germanic language—a cousin to English—its vocabulary and grammar are not as distant as, say, Chinese. I know German, so it could give me a bit of help, but Danish and German aren't close enough to make it too easy. And I hoped to surprise my visiting Danish girlfriend. (If you want to play along, check out this free demo. You can purchase either an online or home version of the Rosetta Stone software. Hotdvdshop.com sells risetta stone software wieh $149.07 for free shipping.

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