MY DISABILITIES DEPOT
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MY DISABILITIES DEPOT - Rosetta Stone Chinese (Mandarin), Level 1 with Audio Companion
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List Price: $229.00
Our Price: $206.10
Your Save: $ 22.90 ( 10% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Rosetta Stone
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Average Customer Rating:   
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Binding: CD-ROM
Brand: Rosetta Stone
EAN: 9781603916950
Feature: Rosetta Stone teaches you a new language naturally, by getting you to think, live and breathe the language
Format: CD-ROM
ISBN: 1603916954
Label: Rosetta Stone
Manufacturer: Rosetta Stone
Model: 20215
Platform: Windows Vista
Publisher: Rosetta Stone
Release Date: 2008-06-16
Studio: Rosetta Stone
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Features
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Rosetta Stone teaches you a new language naturally, by getting you to think, live and breathe the language
Innovative solutions get you speaking new words, right from the start
Rosetta Stone moves forward only when you're ready--you drive the pace, you set the schedule
With Rosetta Stone, you'll discover a foundation of key vocabulary that you'll use to build into a whole new language
Audio Companion lets you take the Rosetta Stone experience anywhere: in the car, at the gym, or on-the-go
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Editorial Reviews:
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Foreign language learning with Rosetta Stone Chinese Level 1 with Audio Companion includes everything you need to begin learning a new language—from grammar and vocabulary to basic sentence structure. It’s the foundation upon which your language-learning journey begins. Gain the confidence to master basic conversational skills, including greetings and introductions, simple questions and answers, shopping and much more. Now Rosetta Stone with Audio Companion allows the learner to take Rosetta Stone anywhere: in the car, the gym or on-the-go! What is Audio Companion? Audio Companion CDs are activities that correspond to the Rosetta Stone CD-ROM software lessons. The learner can listen to Audio Companion and practice what they’ve been learning on the computer, turning travel time into productive language learning time. Audio Companion lets the student access the power of Rosetta Stone lessons whenever and wherever they want, they can play the CD’s on a stereo, or download them to a MP3 player. It empowers the student and helps reinforce the lessons in any busy lifestyle!
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: having a great time!!
Comment: I am about halfway through level 1 Chinese and am having a great time and really learning Chinese! My sister in law is a native speaker and she says I am doing well with the pronounciation and grammer. I think the reviewers who said the method was too confusing maybe weren't giving it a chance. One of the ways they introduce new words is this: they show you a picture of say bread and say 'mian bao', then repeat (different picture of bread then "mian bao") then they say "mian bao" and give you three pictures to choose from (one of which is a picture of bread). Then they show a picture of an apple and say "ping guo" and repeat "ping guo" and give you the same three pictures (bread, apple and egg) you choose apple. Then they say "jie dan" and you pick the only picture you haven't used yet... the egg. Now you know the words for bread, apple, and egg. I am not good at memorizing things, and I am learning very quickly (we've had the program about one month and I am halfway through it. My older two kids (ages 13 and 10) are also doing it, and although they are not going as quickly as I am, they are able to do it without too much trouble. I highly recommend this program for anyone who is an auditory or visual learner. Another great feature is that the lessons are mostly very short, 5 to 15 minutes average, so if you don't have big blocks of time you can still achieve a lot in a short time. There is a lot of repetition so everything you learn is reinforced.
Happy learning and Zia Jiian (good bye)
Customer Rating:
Summary: Great Product
Comment: So far, it's been a great product. It's about the price of an introductory course at a community college and you learn the stuff pretty well. You do need some background though, like tones for pronunciation and a little experience before doing it. Jumping in 100% (as in can't even hello in Chinese) new to Chinese and you'll get lost a bit.
Customer Rating:
Summary: It seems educational, but it is really overrated
Comment: Based upon all the marketing that Rosetta Stone does you would think that their software was really novel and far superior to other language learning methods, but after some time with the software I am not so sure. The software starts by having the user presented with various pictures and the software speaks the words for you for the phrases that you are practicing that particular unit. At no point even in the "grammar" sessions is the concept of even basic word order ever even presented. They basically presume that one is going to learn by trial and error, which given enough time will work, but without some basic understanding of grammar one is mindlessly repeating phrases until one discovers a pattern, which isn't exactly the most efficient means of learning. While that is obviously the *only* way people learn an L1 language (ie. your first language, mother tongue, etc.) with L2 language learning it is sometimes helpful in cases where grammar of the language that one is learning is substantially different from one's native language to have some direct instruction on grammar sense without knowing grammar you can't really understand or use the language. Since Mandarin Chinese isn't even in the same general language group it isn't too surprising that the grammar rules are a bit different than English and hence even a little background might be helpful.
A few other criticisms that I see are that such obviously useful concepts such as cardinal numbers don't get presented early. In most language courses I'm familiar with such concepts get introduced fairly early. One thing that gets a bit monotonous is that there isn't much variety whereas voices. As far as I can tell there are two female voices and two male voices that simply get shuffled around. Another criticism I notice is the lack of authentic texts. In the traditional courses I've taken for a foreign language there has always been various authentic real world uses of the language in question (eg. newspapers, advertisements, cartoons, etc.) that are used in exercises. Despite the cost of the program so far as I can tell Rosetta Stone didn't bother to license the use of any actual authentic content. Obviously licensing content costs money, but it seems exceedingly lazy to not even try to spend the time to make up some content. If one were learning a language via immersion in a country where said language was the primary language one obviously would obviously see the language all around them in various non-contrived uses. Therefore, Rosetta Stone's boast of immersion seems to be a bit of marketing hype in my opinion. Heck, they don't even seem to teach anything about culture. In the absence of understanding a bit of the culture one misses out on certain cultural references or phrases that would be useful in conversations.
Based upon the sample phrases I believe that I figured out a lot, but I ironically found "cheating" and looking up the definitions to a couple of the words in the canned phrases helpful insofar as that I wasn't guessing wrong repeatedly from the context of the sentence. The marketing claims that one can build confidence to use one's vocabulary in real situations, but I don't see any opportunity to actually create one's own sentences and have the software grade your grammar. As anyone who has ever used a grammar checker in Microsoft Word or similar application knows designing one that has perfect comprehension of grammatical rules can be difficult so expecting software to be able to grade your mini essays in a language that you are learning may be a bit of a tall order. This is one area that would find in a traditional classroom environment that doesn't really get duplicated well in this software. The "writing" sections are little more than picking 2-3 options. To make matters worse often times the answers are basically verbatim of what one had seen in the opening section of a lesson. Sure, I may have remembered the brief sentence from the opening lesson, but that doesn't mean I really understand the grammar rules or even understand what is being said. The rather repetitive near verbatim followup lessons make the lessons boring at times insofar as that one is merely reviewing existing material without learning anything new.
While I think that the product clearly has some value for the cost of the product I am a bit disappointed. I could see this as more of benefit towards students as a supplement to more traditional foreign language instruction, but I could hardly recommend this as a replacement for traditional language instruction.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Disappointed with ResettaStone Chinese
Comment: The instructions on how to use the product were confusing and inadequate. I quickly decided that it was much too difficult
for me to attempt to learn. The immersion method might be improved if the system offered translations as it was especially confusing. I could not figure out how the interactive portion worked as the User's Guide didn't explain.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Disappointed
Comment: I bought this product with great expectations. I have been trying off and on for years to learn to be mildly conversant in Mandarin Chinese. I completed two semesters of college level Chinese, but that has been some time ago. My interest rekindled by the Rosetta Stone ads persuaded me to try the product.
The first course shows you a series of pictures with captions in Chinese along with a spoken description in Mandarin of what you are seeing. Later you are shown four pictures simultaneously on one screen with a query in Mandarin as to what you are seeing. The problem for me was that it was not always clear in the single photo series as to what I was seeing. For instance there is a picture of a chef cooking in a wok. Was this depicting cooking, a chef, a restaurant, or something else? There is no English subtitle or "cheat sheet" to help. When the quiz portion showed various pictures with a spoken query it was very hard for me to answer, because I wasn't sure as to what I had seen in the first place.
I don't think I would have made it through the first three lessons had I not had previous experience with Mandarin Chinese. By the end of the third lesson, I was so frustrated; I couldn't continue and returned the product.
There is one feature that I thought was good, but also appears in other software products of this ilk. Since Mandarin is a tonal language, the software matches your tones to the correct tone and alerts you as to whether you are correct or not. For Chinese this is a must have feature.
Some people may benefit from this product if they are more visually attuned to what they are seeing. It reminds me of the icons used by many software products; many make no sense to me but seem obvious to others (which is why flyovers were invented).
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