<p>The entire argument regarding not being about to learn a language when you’re older than x or immersion not being effective after x age has no supporting evidence that I’d agree with. People have this misconception that it’s faster for children to learn a language than an adult, which is TRUE but only because, as someone who isn’t a child, adults have more **** going on in their lives. Assuming neither is a moron, if you pitted an adult and a child against each other in learning the same language the same way for the same amount of time, the adult would win, no question. Your grasp of you native language is sufficiently good by the time you graduate high school (in most cases) to master the complexities of a foreign language but the key sticking point with adult learners is that 95% have neither the time nor the discipline to stick with it. An adult can say “I don’t want to learn Spanish today, I’m going to go watch garbage on the TV” while the kid has no choice; either someone makes him study or it’s necessary for him to learn in order to communicate with the people around him.</p>
<p>I’m not optimistic about your chances if you only want to do ‘fun’ things and never challenge yourself and expect to learn any useful amount of information through a dinky software program and memorization of grammar rules. Most people are talking out of their hats about foreign language learning, I’ve found. These are people who took Spanish in high school, did halfway decently, and now can ask for a burrito in Mexico City and then consider themselves experienced in language learning. Go to the how-to-learn-any-language forums if you’re interested in a real education.</p>
<p>Rosetta Stone is garbage. I got a free copy and tossed it. It’s too ambiguous and relies entirely on photos and images to teach vocabulary (with little teaching of actual grammar). The problem I experienced with it’s dependence on images to teach is that if quickly becomes ambiguous. E.g. They might show a picture of a man throwing a frisbee in the park. Then they give a word matching the photo – the problem is, what is the word referencing? The man, the frisbee, the park or the act of throwing the frisbee? It does this a lot and there’s no vocabulary list to help figure it out. </p>
<p>I found Rosetta Stone to be useless.
Pimsleur, ftw.</p>
<p>Yeah I found pimsleur to be fairly useful for spanish. I finished the level 1 of pimsleur and I plan on doing levels 2 and 3 before starting reading random crap, watching TV shows, etc. What do you guys think?</p>
<p>^^I didn’t find that Rosetta Stone taught any grammar. However, I got frustrated using it after a few weeks because of the above annoyances, so maybe it touches more on it in later segments? To me, Rosetta Stone was just e-flashcards.</p>
<p>^I think that would work. For grammar and speech, Pimsleur is excellent. But if you want to read and write, you’ll need to start supplementing it with other material as you go along. </p>
<p>There’s a website series of language tutorials that I’ve found extremely helpful for supplementing:
(depending on which language you’re doing)
-Chinesepod.com
-Spanishpod.com
-Frenchpod.com</p>
<p>There’s actually a lot of them that the company has. Just pick one of the sites and there should be an “about us” link somewhere that lists all the language sites they have. I can’t remember them all. </p>
<p>It’s a paid site but they give free 7-day trials, so what I do is just keep making new accounts to use it free. But you don’t have to do that, the free accounts actually have a lot of content by themselves – I just really like their worksheets they have which aren’t available free, so I just make new accounts and download as many as I can. </p>
<p>I don’t speak Arabic. I wasn’t thinking about a day to day basis; I was thinking about a life use - since it’s such a hot language, you’ll always have a job (government, the military, contractors, etc.).</p>
<p>MissSilvestris, I disagree with your point. I have observed a noticeable difference in the fluency of immigrants in Germany depending on when they entered the country. Children who got there in elementary school are usually fluent, without much of an accent, 5-10 years later. On the other hand, there are seniors who have been in the country and communicating primarily in German for 30+ years who still make frequent grammatical mistakes (mostly mismatching gender suffixes, actually). The difference is that they were not immersed in the language until well into adulthood.</p>
<p>If the difference between children and adult learners of foreign languages was due to motivation alone, full immersion should be equally effective regardless of age.</p>
<p>I’m not sure that she is right though; surely by relating the grammar of a new language with your first language, a more logical (compared to a child) adult should be able to pick up a language faster THOUGH they will never become NATIVE SPEAKERS, which kids can.</p>
<p>I would agree with the statement that adults can pick up the basics of a foreign language faster than children if formal instruction is provided. However, I still stand by my point that children are MUCH better at picking up a language from immersion alone. Of course adults can and do hugely benefit from immersion but only if it is supplemented by formal instruction. I doubt that adults would pick up on all of the grammatical subtleties of a foreign language if they are never made explicit. Children do that all the time.</p>
<p>I think among the many reasons children do better with foreign languages, is that, for the most part, children don’t over-think when it comes to learning. They tend to take what’s given to them as it is.
Whereas an adult wants to know when x-word should be used and in what situation, what is its grammar usage, what are the different tenses, what are its synonyms, is it a word that’s used casually or formally - etc.</p>
<p>I can’t speak for everyone, but I’ve had many cases where I’ve just plain over-analyzed too much when it came to learning languages.</p>
<p>We bought the Instant Immersion Spanish Levels 1,2,3, at Costco for $27.99. It is very comparable to Rosetta- I would say just as good if not a little easier to use. I am not a big fan of either- I think they get boring and repetetive- but if you are going to spend the money you are definitely going to do as well with the Costco version as with Rosetta.</p>
<p>i agree with the three or four people who said to use pimsluer. it’s a really good platform for starting out.
there are also a lot of free websites you can use too. you really don’t need to spend the hundreds of dollars on rosetta stone.</p>
<p>DO NOT BUY THE ROSETTA STONE!! GARBAGE! I spreak fluently (self-taught) Spanish, French, German, and Portuguese (I speak Kreyol as a heritage language) and I have to agree with MissSilvestris about developing your own way to learn a new language. For me, I began by just listening to the language: music, tv shows, native speakers, etc. Then learn the phonology of the language. Then I got a grammar booked and learned as much grammar as I could. Of course, just learning the grammar wont mean that you’ll be perfect at it, but with time and interaction with the language, it gets better. After that I learnt a bunch of random words and tried constructing sentences on forums or with friends or teachers. Although the beginning is rough (i keep track of my process by keeping the papers that i write so i when im good i can look back on the work that i did and laugh at how awful i was! haha), but it only gets better. It requieres A LOT of time and dedication though. If your not disciplined, it wont work out. This is something that you have to do everyday, nonstop. Language acquisition is one of the hardest things to accomplish for the simple fact that you cant really study for it like other things.</p>
<p>Pimsleur. Expensive (though you can find much less expensive used CDs at pimsleur marketplace dot com - leave the spaces out. The Italian 1, 2, 3 courses really give a nice grounding in listening and understanding, and a strong start in speaking. You don’t learn a lot of vocabulary, but you do learn by listening how real Italian speakers slur words together in sentences and phrases. By not seeing the written language, you don’t confuse yourself with imposing English pronunciations early along. As a prep for an exchange or international program, it is pretty solid.</p>
<p>Well, you’ve had about nine people tell you that Rosetta Stone is garbage…at this point, anything is better than Rosetta Stone. It’s a waste of money.</p>