I just completed my first lesson in Japanese via Rosetta Stone. I love it! It's tricky though! Japanese, that is, not necessarily Rosetta Stone. I like the idea of Dynamic Immersion. It's kind of like a puzzle, and I like puzzles.
I got 88% for my first "grade". I think I would've done better had I figured out earlier how to have the English transliteration above the pictures instead of the Japanese characters. I know--without a doubt--that I'm a visual learner. There are sections of the lesson where you need to repeat the sentence back after the native speaker says it. That's really hard for me to do when I'm only seeing unfamiliar squiggles and specks. Someday, I'd like to learn all of the characters (and I'm SO glad they're in the program, because the kids are excited about that too!), but for now I'd just like to pronounce things correctly. Really, who knows what I said tonight?!
A pleasant surprise was waiting in the Rosetta Stone box--a 36-week lesson plan! I was wondering how on earth I was supposed to divvy up these lessons for the kids. It's all laid out for me. Nice. (I have Version 3, Homeschool edition, BTW.) It looks like I'm responsible for providing some kind of "Cultural Activity" (read: field trip) for weeks 9, 18, 27, and 36. We don't live in a highly Japanese-populated area. I'll have to do some digging on the internet. Should be fun though! Now I'm sort of wishing we were doing Sonlight's Core on the Eastern Hemisphere. Oh well. Maybe I can throw a couple of those read-alouds in as part of our Cultural Activity. I'm really looking forward to this. = )
P.S. FYI, so far, "domo arigato Mister Roboto" has not come up. I'll let you know.
P.P.S. Can you believe I posted two nights in a row?! (Don't get used to it.)
Cool!!! And you know what's really weird? (weeee-ird) I just ordered Rosetta Stone and it's in the mail on its way to our house as we speak! We got Spanish-Latin America. I didn't order the homeschool version, though...darn it. I bet mine won't come with a 36-week plan. Zach will be using the program, but I think I might mess around with it, too!
ReplyDeleteI've wanted to do Rosetta Stone for awhile, either German or French. I figured they were expensive. Do you think the price is appropriate?
ReplyDeleteThey are expensive, but they had a great sale this summer--almost 40% off. We bought only Level 1 (out of three for that language) to try it out. We may by levels 2 & 3 later on, or we might switch to a different language.
ReplyDeleteI did a few more lessons today, and I *really* like it. The first lesson was the hardest. I think they're trying to immerse you in some amount of vocabulary before they break it down more. The first lesson has 40 screens, while the others are less than a dozen (so far).
It's pretty amazing how you can repeat the word/phrases back and the program can tell how close you are to the native speaker you're echoing. That must be the pricey part.
Like I mentioned, we're using the homeschool edition. (BTW Sue, you should be able to exchange if you want to go through the trouble. They have a six month guarantee.) It will last us the entire school year: 36 weeks of 5 days.
I just emailed you a link to where you can get it for $159 for Level 1. It's from my homeschool connections. ; )