Software Evaluation #1
Rosetta Stone
Title of Software: Rosetta Stone
Producer: Fairfield Language Technologies
Target students (e.g., age or grade-level of students): This software is applicable for any age groups. Adult assistance for young learners under the age of 6 is recommended.
Proficiency level (e.g., beginning, intermediate, advanced): Contains lessons from Level 1, Level 2 and Level 3.
Description: Rosetta Stone is a comprehensive language learning software. The program is designed to provide language learners with the option of self-study in their own pace. It targets all four of the mains skills: listening, reading, writing, and speaking. It is considered to be suitable for all language learning backgrounds.
The software is presented in a CD-format. The program is broken down into units. Each unit consists of several lessons. The units incorporate a variety of real-life situations and topics such as getting directions and looking for a job together with some grammar structures. The lessons are structured systematically. The quality of the images is excellent.
The individual lessons target one of the four main skills: reading, listening, writing, or speaking. Some lessons target both listening and reading skills. For each exercise there is a preview and guided exercises.
What are the program’s strengths or weaknesses? Do you feel it would be effective for helping ELLs learn English? Why or why not? Would you use it in your classroom? Why or why not? What method or approach to language teaching does this program appear to represent?
Evaluation: The program’s strength is that it is well structured and interactive. It is logical and easy to follow. There is constant and immediate feedback. The language learner can learn in his/her own pace and return to difficult or problematic lessons any time throughout the learning process.
Among the weaknesses of the program is that it is limited in what it has to offer for the overall purpose of language learning. It inherently lacks social interaction that many believe language learning is based on. It is very scripted, there is no chance for negotiation of meaning, and it does not support constructive language learning.
Though Rosetta Stone does target all four main skills, it is may be more effective in the teaching of some skills than others. The reading sections test reading comprehension in multiple-choice format – not a very original idea. I like the idea of the built-in vocabulary in Level 3, where students can get the meaning of words by clicking on them.
The writing practice is limited to typing the recorded prompts or reconstructing the prompts by arranging phrase blocks in order. In my opinion, typing the recorded prompts is more like a listening comprehension than real writing practice. However, I do believe it may be beneficial for elementary-level learners. In addition, this activity comes with a great feature for feedback. Feedback is provided through two difficulty settings: the easy one (default) does not require correct capitalization or punctuation, while the strict setting does.
The speaking practice is not more than the repetition of prompts – very ‘audiolingualish’. While I do acknowledge the speech recognition aspect (recording and replaying option) of this exercise as very useful for checking and refining pronunciation, I do not believe this exercise has anything to do with real language output.
The program’s most effective part is probably the listening or listening-reading combination. It is easy to see how listening skills can be improved through Rosetta Stone. It is still limited and scripted, but it is a good way of practicing listening skills and/or augmenting listening comprehension with text.
To sum it up, I think Rosetta Stone can be a good tool to improve certain skills such as listening, reading comprehension, and pronunciation, especially in the elementary and intermediate level. It can be beneficial in a classroom where students have very different proficiency levels and therefore, the teacher needs to assign different tasks for each subgroup of students.
Besides the speaking section, I think the program is rather boring and typical of its kind. I do not think a language learner can fully acquire a foreign language using solely the Rosetta Stone. This program should only be used as a tool accompanied by other sources that provide opportunities to be exposed to unscripted language, interaction and opportunities to create the language.
As far as methods, some aspects of the program definitely follow the audiolingual method. I can also see traces of competency-based language teaching. I find it ironic that the cover of the demo mentions “immersion-learning techniques” as one of the program’s characteristics. Nice sales pitch.
R.
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3 comments:
Hi Rita,
Great review! You really hit on many of my concerns with the program. It looks flashy and great, but deep down its really missing something. I got in arguement with a Rosetta Stone salesperson at a mall in Houston. I asked him what theory of language acquisition it was based on. He claimed it was immersion, like the way we learn our first language from our parents. I then pointed out that few mothers says to their children things like "The cat is next to the car." The lack of interaction and useful phrases are a big limitation and dissapointing given the price they are charging for it. Anyway, great review, and thanks for confirming my own concerns with it.
-Dr. Wright
I hear this concern often, so having the perspective of someone who's used this stuff and has succeeded with it, I am always amazed at the short-sightedness inherent in everyone's assumptions. Granted, your review is from some time ago so we may have experienced some differences in what the program offered at the time, but I'm more concerned with the theory rather than the specific mode of presentation.
There is little purpose in teaching and forcing memorization of a specific phrase such as "the cat is next to the car". What you discover is that in this course's beginning, that sort of phrase exists only to help you understand describing spatial relationships between two objects. Over time you will find that developing an intuitive grasp of the sentence structure in similar sentences is what allows you to create your own sentences quickly.
That said, I did at some point in my study begin to branch out and practice in other venues--reading, practice conversations, etc--but I'm sure that's vital in any case. I now can hold conversations with people and what words or expressions I don't know are not difficult to reason from the context of what I do know. This has taken me approximately seven months to date.
Unfortunately as adults I feel that we try to use our intellect often in place of more effective natural mental processes. I've been reading lately about amazing instances where initial, gut reactions or first impressions about various experiences were shown to be more effective than an educated analysis. Not to so that it is always so, but our "gut instinct" is sometimes based on entirely valid clues and perceptions that we're not actually aware of.
Anyhow, this dichotomy is sad but necessary. We live in a world where the most successful of us try, and evaluate, new approaches for ourselves. Language I've learned is one of those paradoxes--if your approach to learning is that you want only to be able to converse with specific, literal expressions then of course "the cat is next to the car" is going to seem like a waste of time.
In the end I beleive we're all doing the same thing when we learn a new language to fluency...the direct correlation of word-to-word translation disappears from your mind, and you use your new language based on relationships, intuitive pattern recognition, and association. I have met people who've come to this country and learned with no other instruction than being forced to listen to and learn to use English, in a third of the time that we somehow beleive we're required to spend in a formal study program. I view "Americanized" formal language learning now with a sad amusement.
My point isn't made to ridicule but to suggest that if some people are succeeding in a new and different approach to doing something...that you may want to ask yourself why that is, and challenge what you've always beleived.
I'm intrigued by what I see from people, but in the end I do not worry because those who think for themselves and question what they've been raised to beleive are the ones who find and take advantage of life's hidden opportunities.
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