WARNING!!!! DO NOT WASTE YOUR MONEY!!!

by Rosie
(USA)

I'm fifteen years old and have studied French for two years in school. I was looking for ways to learn more and improve my French and I had heard about Rosetta Stone. I didn't know exactly which level of CD-rom to buy, so I purchased a six month online subscription which gave me access to all three levels. I am extremely disappointed. The only benefit of the program was the new vocabulary, but even that was sometimes unclear. Since their only method of teaching is words and pictures, sometimes the pictures give you the wrong idea and you believe you know the word's meaning but really you don't. Verb tenses are only touched upon lightly and the actual conjugations are never layed out in an effective way. In addition, there were mistakes! The way to say "they are" in French is "Ils sont." However, there was a typo that read "Il sont." Of course everyone makes mistakes, but I didn't pay $200 for poorly revised software. In addition, this kind of mistake could be extremely confusing to beginners, especially since "Il" means "he" in French. The pictures, though nice to look at with cute animals and children, are often unnecessarily misleading. Sometimes the photos are more artistic than effective in portraying the meanings of words. The speech learning was inconsistent and very difficult to use. I would sometimes repeat the word or phrase more than ten or even twenty times before the computer decided it was corrected. Yet other times I would laugh or cough or speak gibberish and the computer would think that I spoke the phrase perfectly. I was so disappointed with the software that I considered returning it. I had heard Rosetta Stone had a generous return policy, so I sought information on their website. I was outraged when I learned that online subscriptions CANNOT BE RETURNED!!! CD-Rom software can be returned within six months of purchase if you are at all unhappy with the program, so why can't I return my subscription -- it's the exact same program, just not on a CD! Overall, the method of teaching was not at all effective, the software was not worth the money, and the company has ridiculous policies. DO NOT WASTE YOUR TIME, EFFORT, AND MONEY ON THIS SCAM THAT CALLS ITSELF LANGUAGE LEARNING SOFTWARE.