Korean Job Discussion Forums

[CA-NA-DA-ABC]

Anyone use Rosetta Stone on a regular basis? how helpful do you find it to be? Has your language proficiency improved?
I just tried the Japanese version today...overall, I'm fairly impressed.

[djsmnc]

I can say this: It's quite easy to download illegally, but takes quite some time to get motivated to the point of actually using it

[furtakk]

I've been using the Korean one. I 'acquired' it. It is pretty good. I try to do about an hour a day. It probably works best in conjunction with other material or classes though.

I've been doing it for about a week and it has definitely helped some.

[PatrickGHBusan]

Its decent for a beginner but without other material or classes it will not take you very far.

[kirsi]

I tried it but I can't read (prolly should get on that) so it just confused me.

[climber159]

You have no interest in knowing how the gals feel about Rosetta Stone?

[CA-NA-DA-ABC]

[martypants]

I have Korean One - I used it regularly for a while, but can't get motivated these days.

I didn't like that fact that the honorifics are always as if you're speaking to someone
older that you. There's no use of "yo" and it's all ~~seubnida which no one ever speaks except on TV.

It's great for vocabulary, but not real useful for speaking

[noguri]

I like rosetta for learning Korean, I think it's kind of like playing a video game. It's more fun and more active than studying from a book.

I feel that it really, really helped me get started with Korean. Especially pronunciation. A real teacher cannot just say the same thing over and over and over again like a broken record, but with Rosetta, I just click and click and click with the mouse and practice saying it. Finally, after I hear it over and over, I can sort of say it.

For me it was not easy to accustom my ear to Korean but Rosetta helped a lot.

I also like the fact that there are pictures but nothing in English, and no grammatical explanations. You just have to deal with the korean words on the screen and the voice that speaks them. You must deduce the relationship between the words and the pictures. I think it does engage my brain and forces me to start thinking in Korean (albeit in a very rudimentary way).

OK, there are some issues. One is that there are some things that Rosetta Stone teaches which I never hear any Koreans actually saying. This doesn't bother me because I learned Spanish from a textbook and when I went to Mexico I found that nobody used many of the phrases I had learned. So, big deal? I just had to get current with Mexican idioms. Same thing with Korean, I learned something from Rosetta but I just have to make a mental note, "that's not how Koreans really speak." Fact is, Rosetta will gives you what you need to start becoming familiar with the language and get you started down the road.

I like clicking with the mouse. I don't like this lesson? Click, I skip to another that is more fun.

My favorite lesson on the Rosetta Stone Korean is the one that teaches shapes and the phrase for comparisons, "the red square is bigger than the green square," that kind of thing. I always use this phase on cab drivers. "So, are Daejon people nicer than Seoul people?" The cab drivers always laugh when I ask that kind of thing. I learned it from Rosetta Stone and I use it ALL THE TIME on real live Koreans. It works.

It is true what the other poster said that the verbs are always presented in a weird tense. Well, almost always, present progressive tense. It's a tense that is not heavily used in Korean conversation.

If you look at user reviews on Amazon.com you'll see that many people complain about this, whether they are learning Spanish, English or Arabic. Every single language taught Rosetta Stone has that same monotonous use of one single verb tense.

However, I would argue that it's necessary for them to keep one invariable verb tense in order to avoid confusing the language learner as other, new language elements are introduced. It isn't a good way to teach conversation as it occurs naturally, but it is a good pedagogical device for making it possible to introduce a lot of verbs and other parts of speech without bewildering the learner.

After all, we know how complex the Korean verb tense system is and you know it's your own responsibility to crack a textbook and actually tangle with the verbs. However, before you get to the point that you are ready to tangle with the verbs you need some pronunciation skills and some foundational vocabulary. Rosetta Stone gives you that, if you use it.

BTW, those who downloaded it for free, well, that explains perhaps why you are not motivated to use it. If you get something without paying for it, it won't seem valuable to you. Whether it's a book or software or whatever, you're likely to use it only if you actually bought it!

[PatrickGHBusan]