Rosetta Stone is probably the best-selling language-learning software in the world—and it's a good one, used successfully by millions of people in over 150 countries. It's been adopted by government agencies and corporations—including IBM and Lockheed Martin—and thousands of schools and universities around the world.
Its "Dynamic Immersion method" imitates the way we all learned our first language as children: without dictionaries or grammar books, without memorization or translation. Well before school we learned the basics of language by associating new words with familiar objects, actions, and ideas. Therefore, it taps the reasoning and language skills you used to master your native language.
Rosetta Stone offers about 30 languages, and while we have heard mostly positive comments about it from our customers, we have heard of a few drawbacks (other than expense, like not enough variety of activities, not enough writing exercises, no built-in dictionary or grammar aids). Other concerns (like flexibility of use) are addressed in their version 4. Before purchasing Rosetta Stone, we recommend you check into the software program Tell Me More, which we believe offers more bang for your buck. (Its main drawback, as far as we can tell, is that there are only 7 languages offered.)
With the release of version 3, Rosetta Stone pulled distribution from our sources, and made its minimum for orders so high that we no longer carry the program. We have since begun carrying the Tell Me More Foreign Language Program, which we actually like better—though with a couple of caveats.
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