Rosetta Stone

[WesleyEnglish]

So I am new to Spanish. I am using Rosetta Stone. I find it very easy when I have words put in front of me to read what it says, but when it comes to speaking it in anyway I am completely clueless. Is this normal?

I took French in college for like 47 years, and I still can speak a word but I learned Masculine/Feminine and how conjugation works which has made the beginning stages of this relatively easy.

I don't know if my memory is terrible but i can read easily but if I were to have to write it down or say it i come up blank.


Is Rosetta stone even worth it?

[aleCcowaN]

Everything you're saying sounds pretty normal to me (except the 47 years of college )

Last Saturday I was able to give directions to a couple of English speaking tourists in downtown Buenos Aires, in a fluent and complex enough dialogue, for the first time in my life. Who reads from me here or there might find hard to believe I may have such problems to "produce" everyday English, but, you know, it's a matter of practice and being "in the trench and not the headquarters".

Many, many years ago (28 or 29, to be exact) I studied English using something like Rosetta Stone and I acquired some grasp at it. In order to write and have conversations I signed up in a language institute. They made me take a test and they found my skills were good enough for level 2 of 10! I can't express the frustration I felt. After literally hundreds and hundreds of hours studying, just level two, like a kid.

I struggled a bit the first class, but by the second class I was way ahead my classmates. The teacher sent me to level 3. Again, a little struggle, the next class, ahead of my mates. The teacher sent me to level 4. Again, with a little effort on my part. Level 5. Three classes and I was almost to jump to level 6 if I had challenged myself. I decided to play it down a little bit and stay there because I really needed a lot of practice and leaving things behind undeveloped was what put me in that situation first. But this is just to say that those personal courses you follow at home are not enough, but it doesn't mean they are bad at all. My experience taught me I should have looked for some group courses in order to boost my progress, but everything I've learnt with those cassettes and whatnot was there, beneath the surface.

Go ahead, you'll learn a lot with Rosetta Stone. But look for other sources and real situations and if you tumble and fall don't blame the right leg for having felt because your left one is four inches shorter. I mean, the feeling you describe is a normal by-product of a healthy and normal learning process.

[WesleyEnglish]

Thank you for your response. It does get very discouraging. I can literally learn something the day before and repeat it to myself in my head all day, then forget it completely by the next day. I like to try to say my English conversations I have with my wife or anyone to myself in my mind (not out loud, that would be very embarrassing.) Of course being a complete amateur at Spanish I can only say bits and pieces...to be..to have..Who..what..how many and then a hand full of nouns.

Language is one of those things you just want to know instantly, and its so frustrating when you fail miserably at it.

One last question, I find myself as i progress though the basics forgetting things that i learned at an earlier stage. Should I be stopping what I am doing, going back and re-learning it before progressing?


Also if your primary language is not English and you learned it you speak it extremely well. To the point that I couldn't tell at all reading what you wrote.

[aleCcowaN]

Originally Posted by WesleyEnglish

One last question, I find myself as i progress though the basics forgetting things that i learned at an earlier stage. Should I be stopping what I am doing, going back and re-learning it before progressing?

Don't worry, you get back to it eventually. Language learning is not a chain made with links, once one of them breaks and the chain falls. It's more like a rope with single threads that break but they still manage to get the tension passed to the neighbouring threads: the whole rope continue to resist.

Two secrets: When you learn a language in solitude you start inventing the pronunciation. It's true you hear it from a native in a record, but when you repeat you are creating your own version. I'm not talking about your accent as you'll have one for a long while. I'm talking about how do you expect Spanish speakers to pronounce it. Be sure to interact with Spanish speakers, songs, movies and anything not intended as language learning material. Grasp the real sound.

And more importantly, languages, as the word itself tells (lengua = tongue, in Spanish, also language) are to be heard. You haven't learned something until you hear that something pronounced with native accent, and those sounds evoke an image in your brain (not a translation, and certainly not the word in your native language). Be sure to learn new things that way, you won't forget them. Start with a few items a day until you get the trick. Imagination and sounds that enter your ears and translate into visual and abstract concepts.

Originally Posted by WesleyEnglish

Also if your primary language is not English and you learned it you speak it extremely well. To the point that I couldn't tell at all reading what you wrote.

Thank you. Anyway I'm still bounded to say what I can and sometimes I am not able to say what I want, but my scope becomes wider every day. It's not bad, it's an intermediate state. I feel I'm this close of making English my second language. You'll get there, eventually.

A final advice: wait for the "click moments". What is that? Learning a language is not a linear process. Sometimes you struggle and make no progress and sometimes you suddenly move to the next level.

A personal story on that: I was studying English seven hours a day for 20 days and I felt I was making no progress. Out of despair I abandoned it. Some days later I was fooling around, I took an old newspaper and started to read an article about Japan without paying much attention. I was many lines into it when something caught my total attention, but suddenly I experienced the feeling I was not getting certain word and I wondered why can't I understand this word. Then I realized it was and old New York Times. I was reading in English without even realising it! Click moment! The 7x20 had caused an effect, but not exactly when I expected it.

[Sancho Panther]

I looked at a Rosetta Stone Spanish course in my local library, I wasn't keen on it - it's not bad on vocabulary, nice pictures to illustrate the nouns, but the grammar content is very limited. It's not bad for beginners but for what it costs it doesn't take you very far. There are better courses for less money.

A bit juvenile in my opinion.

[kimma]

@aleCcowaN
Your newspaper story is awesome. I hope something like that happens to me one of these days.

@wesleyEnglish
I am having a very similar experience. I do fine in the exercises (am using duolingo mostly), am starting to read ok, but I have a hard time saying anything. Partly it's fear of sounding silly - i am sure my accent is horrendous - and partly freezing up when trying to think of something.

I am soon going to go to a spanish/english meetup where hopefully i'll be able to say things like "tengo dos gatas y un perro pequeño" to some patient people. Have you tried looking for a meetup in your area?

NB: i also have rosetta stone and found it great for base vocab especially nouns, but don't see how it could possibly teach more complex grammar except by rote.