Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)Despite serious flaws, this course is an efficient way to learn most of what I need to know. With the inductive method which Rosetta Stone calls Dynamic Immersion, all content is in Hebrew, forcing the student to think in Hebrew and allowing the formation of hypotheses, which are refined as more material is presented. I found this process of discovery both effective and fun.
Rosetta Stone courses are almost completely devoid of cultural content. The same photographs and the same words and sentences (translated, of course) are used for all languages. Aside from not teaching the student important cultural details, this approach ignores the fact that language affects how people think, and vice versa. Compare this to the French in Action course of Pierre Capretz, in which friends are sitting around an outdoor table and the first person to leave faces each of the others individually to say "au revoir," or to Modern Spanish (Harcourt, Brace & World, 1960), in which a boss tells his secretary that he never goes to communion and she replies that she always does, and we thus learn something about unspoken communication and the dynamics of power and sex in the Spanish-speaking world.
I reluctantly accept this lack of cultural information and the business model which makes it unlikely that we will ever see it in Rosetta Stone courses. Self-study cannot fully substitute for taking a class from a native speaker.
It seems to me that this course is not sufficiently "active." Most of the exercises are multiple-choice, in which Hebrew text and spoken word must be matched with pictures. I am not really forced to retrieve the word or phrase from my memory. I can work around this limitation a little bit, by spending some time repeating the phrases before advancing to the next screen, or by looking at a picture and figuring out the text before I look at it, but the course does not force me to do those things.
Rosetta Stone ads disparage flash cards, unfairly, I think. Flash cards are a great example of adaptive learning, in that I can decide how long to look at a card and where to replace it in the deck, based on whether I got the right answer and how much difficulty I had. The only way this course uses adaptive learning is in deciding when (immediately or on some future date) an entire lesson will be repeated. This approach really falls short in the writing (spelling) lessons. They consist of 6 screens, in each of which I must type 1 to 4 complete sentences. If I make a mistake, the first incorrect letter is highlighted. Eventually, I get that letter right, and then the next incorrect one is highlighted. When I finally get everything right, the software immediately erases what I just wrote and moves me onto the next sentence, destroying most of what little recollection I had of my correct answer. Absent inconvenient work-arounds, I often do not get to practice what I have just learned, until the next time I do the same or a different writing exercise.
It would not have been difficult for Rosetta Stone to make the writing lessons much more effective: if something takes me more than one try, leave my final, correct, answer on the screen until I push an OK button. Then give me that sentence again. When I get it right twice in a row, give me another sentence to spell, but then repeat the one that gave me problems. Continue the repetition, increasingly infrequently, as I reinforce my mastery.
The pronunciation exercises are a useful opportunity to practice speaking but are not very effective in detecting good or bad pronunciation. With the same setting of how strict the voice recognition should be, I sometimes have to repeat good pronunciation several times before it is accepted, and then, a few frames later, I badly flub my line and it is accepted.
I did not find the optional Audio Companion, CDs that you can listen to in your car, very useful. Dynamic immersion with no visual information does not work well for me, and I need not to be distracted while I am driving.
The course has an option to choose whether letters are displayed with or without vowel points and dageshes, the little marks that are below, above, or inside some letters to help with pronunciation. That is useful: pointed text is essential for students at my level of competence, but most Hebrew writing is unpointed. I wish there were another option, to change to a script (handwriting) font, pointed or unpointed. Script letters look different from printed ones, and it is important to learn them.
Initially (in 2008), I had numerous problems with the software. The Rosetta Stone technical support people were quite helpful, though I sometimes wished the development folks would release their bug-fixes more quickly. Version 3 seems to have been brought to market before it was quite ready. For the most part, everything is now fixed. I would recommend that anyone buying a Rosetta Stone course make sure that all available updates are applied, which is automatic if you check a box and have an Internet connection.
Despite its flaws, this course is working well for me. When I decide to study another language, I will probably buy a Rosetta Stone course for it.
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Product Description:
Foreign language learning with Rosetta Stone Hebrew 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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