Product Description

Foreign language learning with Rosetta Stone Chinese Levels 1, 2&3 you connect with the world around you. With level one you begin learning fundamental vocabulary and essential language structure, from greetings and introductions to simple questions and their answers. Gain the confidence and enter the intermediate level where you will be able to talk about your environment; give and get directions, tell time, dine out with self-reliance, shop and enjoy basic social interactions. Taking what you’ve learned in Levels 1 and 2, we help you reach an advanced level of competence. This competence allows you to connect with the world around you. You will learn to share your ideas and opinions, express your feelings and talk about everyday life; your work, current events and much more. Now Rosetta Stone with Audio Companion allows the learner to take Rosetta Stone anywhere: in the car, the gym or on-the-go! What is Audio Companion? Audio Companion CDs are activities that correspond to the Rosetta Stone CD-ROM software lessons. The learner can listen to Audio Companion and practice what they’ve been learning on the computer, turning travel time into productive language learning time. Audio Companion lets the student access the power of Rosetta Stone lessons whenever and wherever they want, they can play the CD’s on a stereo, or download them to a MP3 player. It empowers the student and helps reinforce the lessons in any busy lifestyle!

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #246 in Software
• Brand: Rosetta Stone
• Model: 20285
• Released on: 2008-06-16
• Platforms: Windows 2000, Mac OS X, Windows XP, Windows Vista
• Format: CD-ROM
• Original language: English

Features

• Rosetta Stone teaches you a new language naturally, by getting you to think, live and breathe the language
• Innovative solutions get you speaking new words, right from the start
• Rosetta Stone moves forward only when you're ready--you drive the pace, you set the schedule
• With Rosetta Stone, you'll discover a foundation of key vocabulary that you'll use to build into a whole new language
• Audio Companion lets you take the Rosetta Stone experience anywhere: in the car, at the gym, or on-the-go

Amazon.com
Rosetta Stone Personal Edition contains everything you need to give the voice inside of you a new language. The method used recreates the natural way you learned your first language, revealing skills that you already have. This approach has won numerous awards, and has been adopted by countless organizations, schools and millions of users around the world. Join the language revolution today. Only with Rosetta Stone.

The comprehensive language-learning solution that fits your life.

Learn Naturally
Learn your next language the same way you learned your first language. Dynamic Immersion empowers you to see, hear and comprehend without translating or memorizing. You already have this ability. Rosetta Stone simply unlocks it.

Engage Interactively
Get feedback to move forward. You learn best by doing, and you'll apply what you've learned to get to the next step. Rosetta Stone adapts to your individual needs and skills, because you drive the program with your progress.

Speak Confidently
Start speaking immediately. From the very first lesson, you'll speak. You'll begin with essential basics, which form the building blocks of the language. Soon you'll create new sentences on your own, using words you've learned.

Have Fun
Best of all, Rosetta Stone is addictive. With every entertaining activity, you'll feel success. You'll want to use Rosetta Stone to have that next moment, that next breakthrough. So you'll keep using it, and you'll learn more!

That's language-learning success.
That's Rosetta Stone.

No translation or memorization required.

The most effective way to learn a new language is to be surrounded by it. When you were an infant, your parents taught you this way, by intuitively associating words with images. That's the ultimate language lab, but most language-learning programs completely ignore this.

Think about all of the ways you've tried to learn a language: classes at school, tapes and cassettes, even software that uses your native language as a base for your next one. What do they all have in common? Translation and memorization.

Instead of taking a "direct flight" from your brain to your new language, translation and memorization connects you to your old language. You always have to "fly" from your brain, to your native tongue ... and then translate what you've memorized to communicate.

That might work for a few words, but what happens when you get to a sentence or phrase? When you have to change tenses? You're going to make a lot of "connecting flights." That's why those other methods are so frustrating ... and why they fail.

Enter Dynamic Immersion.
This method encourages you to think like a baby. You'll pair words with vivid, real-life images and make connections between things you know and the new language. Soon, you'll be thinking in a new language, stringing words together into phrases that you create.

Innovative technology.
Rosetta Stone places this Dynamic Immersion method at the core of a suite of software that works with you to develop your skills. The simple, intuitive interface helps to keep you engaged in the solution, while advanced speech recognition technology makes certain that you're speaking correctly and accurately. Best of all, Rosetta Stone never leaves you behind. You'll only move forward when you're ready, when you've become comfortable and confident.

Communicate and connect with the world: Level 1, 2 & 3 Set.
Rosetta Stone Level 1, 2 & 3 Set will take you on a journey from the basics to a whole new level of sophistication. You'll build a foundation of fundamental vocabulary and essential language structure. You'll quickly gain the confidence to engage in social interactions. Say "hello" and "goodbye," arrange travel, order food, go shopping and more! From there, you'll share your ideas and opinions, express feelings and talk about your life, your interests and more. You'll discover a voice. In a new language.

Audio Companion
With Audio Companion, you'll enhance the Rosetta Stone experience wherever you go. You'll learn new skills on the computer, and then reinforce what you've learned with Audio Companion. Simply play the CDs on a stereo or download them to a MP3 Player. Each Audio Companion activity corresponds to a lesson in the Rosetta Stone software, so you can turn your travel time into productive language-learning time.

Inside the box, you'll find:

• Version 3 Personal Edition CD-ROM software for Levels 1, 2 & 3 (Windows/Mac)
• Headset microphone
• User's guide
• Audio Companion, a multiple-CD set to play or download to your MP3 player

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Customer Reviews

Lipstick on a Pig - a poor program dressed up in a nice interface
I have fond memories of using Rosetta Stone software to learn German - they have a great interface and it really enhances the fun of learning a language. Unfortunately, after carefully working through all 3 levels of their Chinese software, I sadly have come to the conclusion that it is a very poor choice for learning Mandarin Chinese. There are three, interconnected reasons for this:

First, Rosetta Stone has made no effort to adapt their software to the Chinese language - they have merely slapped Chinese audio and text onto the same course they use to teach western languages. This problem manifests both as bothersome errors and missed opportunities. I will give a few examples:

a) Instead of using Chinese names and Chinese currency, the program uses transliterations of Western names and a grabbag of difference currencies. Thus it overwhelmes the learner with the long, convoluted transliterations of Western names, leaves them unaccustomed to Chinese names, and completely unable to confront the potentially confusing Chinese currency system (with both colloquial and formal names for the different types of money).

b) Mandarin Chinese is a tonal language, with 4 tones (which determine the meaning of a sound) plus the neutral tone. A word said in the neutral tone is much softer and shorter than normal. Unfortunately, Rosetta Stone seems to have neglected to adapt their voice recognition software for this. It will often fail to register a correctly pronounced neutral tone word. The program actually is training people to pronounce the neutral tone incorrectly - too loud and too long. Further, the voice recognition system has trouble when the learner doesn't speak very slowly - a problem, since Chinese is spoken at a somewhat rapid rate. Both cause it to train bad habits into the learner.

c) The stock pictures, situations, and statements, do not at all reflect the cultural realities of Chinese language. For example, why is the learner constantly saying "xiexie" (thank you), when this is comparatively less common in China? How about teaching them to respond to complements by saying "nali nali" (where, where), a culturally appropriate response, even if strange to western ears? Why is everyone using credit cards everywhere - try relying on a credit card in China. Instead of just people buying "yao" (medicine), how about introducing the learner to the important distinction between "xiyao" (western medicine) and "zhongyao" (Chinese medicine), common terms they will confront? The program fails to give any cultural insight - and thus misses one of the most enjoyable, interesting, and useful parts of learning a language.

d) In learning Chinese, a very helpful reality is that the meaning of multisyllable words almost always has a logical relationship to the meanings of its syllables. For example, "Huo" means Fire, "Che" means Vehicle, and "huoche" literally FireVehicle, means train. This can be very helpful to the learning process - if one first learns the one syllable words, learning the combination is quick and easy. Rosetta Stone makes no effort to deviate from its stock lesson plan to take advantage of this, however. So, using our example, the learner is confronted with both "che" and "huoche" early, and isn't exposed to the meaning of "huo" until near the end of the 3rd level!

e) The "writing" exercises are absurd. You type in the pinyin (the alphabet spelling) and then are done. This is NOT writing Chinese. Writing Chinese is either drawing the character, or typing the pinyin and selecting the appropriate character from the list of characters that have this pinyin spelling, or the more complex typing methods. Most literate Chinese people are not going to be able to understand if you write them some pinyin, you need the characters. This is pure laziness on Rosetta Stone's part - they fail to incorporate what Google published free applications for!

Second, consistent with the above point, the "Roseetta Stone method" as they call it, is unsuited to learning a language as distant from English as Chinese is. The Chinese sounds represented by the consonants "sh" "s" and "x" are all going to sound alot like the English "s" to a learner, the "zh" and "j" are all going to sound like a "j", and on it goes through virtually the entire alphabet. Even if the learner eventually stumbles into being to hear the difference in normal speed speech (a big if), without some instruction he/she will never learn how to properly produce the differences. The fact is, we aren't kids anymore, and we bring the baggage of our native language with us. Ok for a Western language, perhaps, but dangerous for a far distant one like Chinese. We need to be expressly taught - "to produce the sh or zh sound, you need to have your tongue point up, while the x and j has your tongue against your lower teeth. Practice and you'll hear the difference, even if they sound somewhat alike." More subtle points also exist - Rosetta Stone is not going to stop you from pronouncing "kao" like the American way of saying the animal Cow, or that the Chinese "b", unlike the English one, is unvoiced, so you need to stop vibrating your vocal cords - that kind of refinement takes conscious effort and instruction. The same is even more true for learning the tones, and especially the "Tone Sanhi", the way they change in context, though this review is complex enough without me going into that. If you ever hope to sound better than a guy with a $10 dollar phrasebook trying to use English sounds to mangle the Chinese language, Rosetta Stone won't get you there (even if its overgenerous voice recognition gives you plenty of pleasant sounding "you are correct!" sound effects, that trick you into feeling like you're progressing).

Third, the software, despite being priced at many times what other programs are, actually barely introduces the language. Sure, diligently work through its 3 levels, and you'll learn a number of verbs, some names for food (incidentally, the kinds of foods common in the West, not generally Chinese dishes), and a few grammar particles. But you will remain completely incapable of functioning in China. Sure, they drill you in understanding that "xingqi" means week, but you'll be out of luck as soon as someone says the other word for week, "libai". They focus on "zheli" and "nali", but you will more often hear "Zher" and "Nar" in the North of China. They always say "na" meaning "that", but only once did I hear them say the just as commen "nei." They give the illusion of advanced vocabulary, by teaching you how to say pinetree, but in truth they neglect countless essential words, like "kuai", the colloquial expression for money.

At its price, this program should offer more than Chinese audio and text clumsily slapped on to a stock design. As is, you can get much, much more culturally adapted and in-depth programs for a small fraction of the price. In truth, the Foreign Service's old language tapes and workbooks for learning Chinese, available in the public domain with a google search, is a much better program, and is offered entirely free! Then take less than half the money you would have spent and buy some of the many excellent tools and books Amazon has - books on Chinese characters Reading & Writing Chinese: Simplified Character Edition, flashcards Chinese in a Flash Volume 2 (Tuttle Flash Cards) (Chinese Edition), some of the older programs from the Beijing Foreign Press Elementary Chinese Readers (Volume I), which have nice short stories and excelent instruction in how to make the sounds - and you'll have a much more effective learning program. For extra fun subscribe to ChinesePod, and get 1000s of dialogues, all culturally authentic to Chinese life, and you'll hear how language is actually used in China, and learn the all-important term for the street food vendors. All you'll miss is the pleasant bells and whistles of the Rosetta Stone interface, and the false promise that you can absorb a language as complex and foreign as Chinese as if it were a Western language.

Very well produced program, but still very hard to learn to speak accurately
The Rosetta Stone (RS) learning interface is well designed and very clean. It is the most user friendly language learning program I've experienced. What's more, the user interface applies to all of their language modules so learners of multiple RS language modules will be comfortable and at home with the "dynamic immersion" approach.

At best, the RS Mandarin will train you to be conversational in Mandarin. It will not allow you to recognize and write Chinese characters easily- that is an entirely different discipline better served by other instructional approaches. It is possible to speak and not be able to read the characters at this stage.

Mandarin is hard language to speak for most westerners. The 4 primary pronunciation tones (see Wiki's Pinyin article for an excellent overview) sound subtle to western tongues and are very hard to pronounce for the typical English speaker. This is because the way the mouth (lips, tongue, breathing) moves in pronouncing Mandarin is completely different to speaking English. My wife, an American from the South who speaks English with a somewhat relaxed and dragged out accent, has incredible difficulty in discerning the tonal differences, let alone pronouncing them accurately. Discerning and learning these tonal differences is crucial to successful conversational Mandarin. If you remember the 70's-80's Kung-Fu movies, they sometimes have a Westerner as a sparring combatant and they will sometimes speak some Mandarin in between the flying punches. To the Mandarin speaker, it always sounds really funny because they have typically messed up the tonal inflections. For example, "ma" can mean mother, horse, to scold, to wipe, a question, measles, etc., when used with the correct tone and context. So, to avoid speaking "Kung-Fu Mandarin" (comical and embarrassing in a business meeting, but at least it gets them smiling), it is essential to listen to the Mandarin speakers on the RS software very very carefully and practice repeatedly. That said, the speakers on the RS software have clear excellent accents but the microphone pronunciation feedback tool is not tight enough and will tolerate tonal mis-pronunciations.

If you are learning Mandarin alone, it would be very helpful to still seek a native Mandarin speaker. It helps to observe the mouth when pronouncing the words (I wish RS would have avi's of the speaker's mouth up close as a pronouncing aid). It also helps to be corrected immediately to avoid entrenching bad habits. And if you are finding an instructor, get an educated person that speaks with a proper accent. You want the Beijing news reader quality. China is a large country and speakers from different parts of China have very different accents. For example, speakers from HK or Canton will often speak (if they even can!) Mandarin that is heavily tinged with a Cantonese accent. No point learning that. Should you be discouraged? No!!! If you are in China or get Chinese cable programs, you will notice some westerners on the language and outreach programs. Folks, these guys speak a brand of Mandarin with such accuracy and poise that would put most native speakers to shame!

From a native's point of view
I also teach Chinese to both adults and children.

Today, I installed the "application" program, which gives your a choice of focusing on listening, writing, reading and speaking or just some of them. I selected them all. After I was done with that, I was required to insert the "Level one"/ "audio" disc, which takes me through the beginning of the lesson. I learned men, boy, women, girl, this, eat, run, juice, water, tea and sentences that would incorporate all of the above.

I could listen to a native speaker pronounce the word while looking at a picture/image without any help of translation. For example, they show you the image of tea while saying "Cha." If I need to, I can also replay the pronunciation over and over.

For practice, after I've learned the new word, I am required to listen to what he/she says and then pick out the picture that matches the word/sentence. At this point, you realize that everything is all set up for the learner to learn by listening and matching the sound to the image/picture without giving you a chance to utilize the part of your brain that converts the new language to your mother tongue or vice versa. Every now and then, you are required to repeat the phrase or word into your microphone.

After my first try, I put my American friend into the experiment, as I watched on his side and remained uninvolved. Amazingly, by the time he got through the first part of the lesson, he could understand it when the native speaker (computer) said men, women, boy, girl, water, tea, run, tea in Chinese and matched them with the right image correctly 99% of the time. I was very very impressed and pleased.

Had he really put into some time to stop and repeat over and over, he would've definitely been able to say those words without any cues. So, stop and repeat and stop and repeat. Success in speaking relies heavily on your own speaking in the learning process.

Also, next to the picture/image is the pronunciation composed in alphabets. For example, men in Chinese "nan ren" and women is "nu ren." Listening and speaking altogether is no problem! Within 20 minutes of time, my American friend (who had been a complete "Chinese illiterate") eventually was able to know and remember those new words that he had just learned for 10 minutes.

In the meantime, if you'd like to change the setting to make the speaker speak more slowly, or change the male voice to female, you could do so by clicking on "setting" on the upper right hand corner of the window.

Nothing is perfect. So, here are some drawbacks, in my opinion.

First, you need to read the very long manual and know what to do with all the discs in the package. There is also a speed manual that is written in less than a few pages to help you jump start quickly. And then it'd take about 20 minutes to install everything.

Secondly, you need to be good and sensitive with the computer. For example, the computer man or woman says "nan ren" and then stops, I don't see any directions or instructions on the page, but to continue, I click around and repeat the word. There-- I realize they are waiting for me to repeat the word into the mic. Another example, now I know I need to repeat after them, I keep speaking words into the microphone. At one point, the computer says "nan ren" and there are three or four images at the bottom, I keep saying the word into the mic but get no response. So, I start clicking around. There-- I realize this is the matching exercise.

I wish they were more clear with instructions as to some, this may cause discouragement and impatience.

So, my advice is: Speak into the mic or click on pictures if you have no idea what to do.

I haven't gone far with the set of program, but my feeling is this is a system designed to help you learn the basic words and basic sentence patterns without having to go to someone. Also, the real and trained native speaker that provides good and authentic pronunciation is a big plus, as the reality is not every native speaker you encounter speaks his/her language properly.

I highly recommend it for beginners to get a strong jump start. For those who are intermediate or higher, know that ultimately to learn a language, one would still have to interact with one another.