4 stars (Very good if you are a somewhat advanced) - As most of the reviewers have mentioned, this course is not for the beginner, even though Rosetta Stone advertises it differently. It can be very useful to you under the following conditions:
1) You already have an understanding of Chinese grammar, so that the sometimes very complex sentences even in early lessons won't overwhelm you. In turn you will profit immensely from the amount of vocabulary you can learn in a short time.
2) You don't expect to get conversational proficiency. Rosetta Stone teaches you to describe pictures, something which is done in many real-life language courses I have visited. One could say it is just a concentrated form of this particular exercise. That said, it will enhance your ability to describe and to link words to objects and anchor that link in your brain. For me that method works much better than vocab lists, even in a flash card form.
Especially, I don't know a better way to learn modifiers, an essential part of Chinese grammar.
3) You always have a dictionary at hand to look up words because the programm does not give you any translations.
4) You don't expect it to teach you how to write Chinese characters. This is always something you have to do on your own, a computer cannot really help you. By changing between Pinyin and character script (traditional and simplified) in Rosetta you can learn how to recognize characters, but I think of it more of a vocabulary builder. Also, if much text is displayed, characters tend to get too small in order to be recognized.
5)You see it as one more tool in your collection of Chinese learning materials. In my opinion for Westerners Chinese can only be learned this way, you can't rely on a single book to provide everything.
It gets 4 stars because of the price which I find outrageous. Given the fact that the Chinese version is merely an adaptation of the general Rosetta Stone system, it should go for no more than $150 both levels. So try to get it used and resell it when you've finished it.
5 stars (Chinese Characters, Pinyin, Pictures and Voiceovers: Rosetta Stone) - Rosetta Stone Level 1 & 2 Personal Edition is elite software for learning Chinese and other languages. The software definitely offers complete lessons for learning traditional and simplified Chinese characters, as well as pinyin romanization. It's expensive and so some reviewers may be resentful that it doesn't embody the whole language, but along with Pimsleur this is the best software out there.
My experience is simple: I loved Rosetta Stone, then left it alone thinking I'll find something more exciting. Now after Talk Now, Power Chinese and others, I'm back to using Rosetta Stone as a centerpiece for my independent Chinese language education. It's that good. It's like the best tour book for the world. You've got to get it and you use it until it's worn. Then one day you throw it over the Great Wall, or leave it behind on one sidetrip so you can get another angle of experience. But when you tell others to try something else, you still guard your CD-roms like a Qing warrior. "No, you may not borrow it! I hate it, but it's mine."
Rosetta Stone is very intelligent, fair to people of all colors and at the polite end of the spectrum. Street slang books with cartoons and 'Making Love in Thai' are at the other end. Rosetta Stone indulges in little or none of the lurid or silly stuff. Maybe that's why I click it off and surf the web for breaks. But I click back frequently these days.
How does it work? The tutorials are awesome. The user cycles through top-notch software windows with crystal clear pictures and sound and by the time the cycle is done a transformation has taken place. Characters that were once foreign are familiar- at least from the angle offered by the software. Read a book and your mind might go blank, but that changes with time. For the programmed cycles of pictures and captions and voiceovers has its eventual impact. Absolute beginners may get disillusioned, but then almost all language student do. Those reviewing Rosetta Stone low are failing to acknowledge the elite quality of this software compared to most of what is out there. The high price definitely indicates the quality. For instance, Power Chinese at $39.99 is worth about $5.00 compared to Rosetta Stone.
My simple advice: try the explorer edition at about $20.00 and see how much higher the quality is than other software offered at that price. The weaknesses of Rosetta Stone can be made up in class, by listening to an expensive Pimsleur CD, and by scribbling in a good writing workbook. After two years of part-time use I have not even used the software to it's fullest. So Rosetta Stone's true value is still a mystery. In any case, I enthusiastically recommend this Five Star Product for it remains worthy of five stars no matter what it doesn't do for the student of Chinese.
2 stars (WARNING: Rosetta has NO CHINESE CHARACTERS) - This is a mediocre product, it only contains pinyin, the standard romanization of spoken Mandarin Chinese. You won't learn any characters with this!!!
I highly recommend Go2China Software by UNITESOFT, at the moment you can buy only in China, Amazon.com does not have it in stock yet:(...)
For speaking I recommend Pimsleur Mandarin Chinese I, II, III.
Tell Me More CHINESE is another product you might want to look at, but Go2China is much better.
Zai Jien |
