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Rosetta Stone: Mandarin

Rosetta Stone: Mandarin

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Does anyone here have familiarity with the Rosetta Stone software for Chinese (Mandarin)? Is it worth the sticker price?

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Nope. Big rip off.

Pimsleur is way cheaper and just as good....but it's audio only.

Audio being good for when you are driving...saving you time.

Rosetta stone is too expensive and it's computer software, so that means sitting there looking at your computer.

I have Rosetta stone and Pimsleur...I use Pimsleur.

Just my opinion.

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Originally posted by LemonJello
Does anyone here have familiarity with the Rosetta Stone software for Chinese (Mandarin)? Is it worth the sticker price?
I like it a lot, but I don't know if it's worth its price though. you certainly learn surprisingly quickly with its intuitive philosophy. nothing is explained, you just get pictures about basic things and click on what you think is the right choice. chosing picture based on what you hear etc.

you can probably loan it from library and try if it's your thing?

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Originally posted by chessiswar
Nope. Big rip off.

Pimsleur is way cheaper and just as good....but it's audio only.

Audio being good for when you are driving...saving you time.

Rosetta stone is too expensive and it's computer software, so that means sitting there looking at your computer.

I have Rosetta stone and Pimsleur...I use Pimsleur.

Just my opinion.
pimsleur is very dated though, but I've used it more than rosetta. but I still like rosetta as well.

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The best way to learn is go to a major city library and on the message board you'll see people posting "Teach me english, i'll teach you...... (fill in the blank)

But that means going there for regular lessons....time issue again.

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Having studied Mandarin (putonghua) I'd say find a good teacher at a reasonable price. It's so important to get the tones right and the only reliable way to do that is through immediate feedback and supplemental help from a teacher.

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I took a graduate course in Second Language Acquisition. The professor said Rosetta Stone is crap.

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no computer course or dvd/cd can touch a teacher. spend the money you'd spend on rosetta stone on a teacher, you'll learn more and retain it better

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Originally posted by AThousandYoung
I took a graduate course in Second Language Acquisition. The professor said Rosetta Stone is crap.
rosetta pretty much completely ignores teaching grammar, so maybe that's why he thinks it's crap? - I've studied quite many languages the other way around, starting from grammar, and I think the intuition based way has a lot to offer. it won't teach you to write technical papers correctly, but you'll reach basic conversational skills in weeks instead of maybe a year or two of grammar based study.

with a real teacher everything is different of course.

I don't want to sound like a rosetta fanboy or anything, but I think it deserves recognition for its strengths.