I just want to add that I recently took the plunge and bought levels 1-5 Rosetta Stone for both Spanish and German. I know there are a lot of criticisms about this system, mostly in terms of cost but I have found it to be a huge improvement over any other self study course. Unless you are able to take off time and go live in the other country I think Rosetta Stone is the best option. I would go so far as to say that it is better than taking a night course at a local community college.
I do think the system has it flaws but it is definitely a big improvement over everything that has come before. I think the future of language learning will resemble Rosetta Stone but that it will use machine learning to be more dynamic and adapt itself to things that you are having trouble with, perhaps it will seem more 'croudsourced'.
Before Rosetta Stone I was making zero progress with German, after one year using a CD/Book approach I was continually forgetting vocabulary, unable to pronounce things, etc, etc.
There is something about Rosetta Stone that is almost like falling into hours of mindless gaming. It never seems too hard to get stuck but it just keeps on pushing what I know little by little.
I think that they should use photoshop to make their pictures more cheaply. Also, the milestone segments seem pretty worthless. Sometimes it would be nice to see the grammar of a practice sentence diagrammed so that I could go and read an analytic description of the grammar point.
For German more than for Spanish I'm finding it helpful to treat the Rosetta Stone as a supplement to other approaches especially as the grammar confuses me a great deal.
So while the program is expensive (I paid $500 for Spanish on disks and $329 for one year of online only access to the German) it is the only thing I have found worth spending money on short of immersion. If you have a 9-5 job then most likely Rosetta Stone will be a good time vs cost trade off. That has been my experience so far.
I do think the system has it flaws but it is definitely a big improvement over everything that has come before. I think the future of language learning will resemble Rosetta Stone but that it will use machine learning to be more dynamic and adapt itself to things that you are having trouble with, perhaps it will seem more 'croudsourced'. Before Rosetta Stone I was making zero progress with German, after one year using a CD/Book approach I was continually forgetting vocabulary, unable to pronounce things, etc, etc. There is something about Rosetta Stone that is almost like falling into hours of mindless gaming. It never seems too hard to get stuck but it just keeps on pushing what I know little by little. I think that they should use photoshop to make their pictures more cheaply. Also, the milestone segments seem pretty worthless. Sometimes it would be nice to see the grammar of a practice sentence diagrammed so that I could go and read an analytic description of the grammar point.
For German more than for Spanish I'm finding it helpful to treat the Rosetta Stone as a supplement to other approaches especially as the grammar confuses me a great deal.
So while the program is expensive (I paid $500 for Spanish on disks and $329 for one year of online only access to the German) it is the only thing I have found worth spending money on short of immersion. If you have a 9-5 job then most likely Rosetta Stone will be a good time vs cost trade off. That has been my experience so far.