Language Learning: Popular Methods Review
Today’s technology has made the world much smaller and many people have become interested in learning foreign languages. Some want to learn for fun, many for business reasons, but it is your desire and passion to learn that will make you successful. No one can give you that.
I have found that many popular language learning methods are not what they say they are and you can quickly spend a lot of money on them. Here is my homework on some of them.
Rossetta Stone – Online – $ 299 for 12 months
Tried the free online demo on the Rossetta Stone site. The demo seems to boast that there are no written translations, it is learned by looking at images only. The first Spanish lesson shows images of a woman (a woman) and a man (a man). By clicking on the pictures, you will learn the words woman and man. The next lesson shows a boy (a boy) or a girl (a girl). So now you have learned words for boy, girl, man and woman. The following images are of people drinking and eating. All this is learned only from images. There are no written translations. This is where I had some questions. What if you wanted to know who this woman is? (in the photo) What is it called? Where is she from? What kinds of pictures can you make to teach me the words who, what, where, her, and her name? Also, what do the words es, this and de look like? I had to use google translate to find that (a) and (a) are the word “a” in Spanish. I urge you to take the free online Rossetta Stone demo before purchasing.
Pimsleur – software – $ 119.95
The site started by teaching me prayers. I think it makes more sense to build a vocabulary first than to start with sentences because then you will know what each word means. From his free half-hour sentence repetition lesson, I learned the Spanish words for sorry, understand, English, miss, speak, sir, no, yes, a little, American, you and you are. Twelve words. I was a little perplexed because they taught me “understand” and “understand” for the word “understand” and then they told me I was saying “I understand” and “you understand”. “Yo” is me in Spanish and “you” is you. “I” was never said with understand and “you” was used only at the end of the lesson and was not said with the words to understand.
The lesson is audio only. Nothing is written. I like to see the words because it is easier for me to remember them. I fully agree with your statement: “Probably no aspect of learning a foreign language is more important than memory.” Word memory is the key. Repetition is good for this reason. I think you could learn from your approach, but it will be slow and impossible to learn sentences of your own choosing.
Transparent language – software – $ 179.95
I like the philosophy of the site. I couldn’t test it because they don’t offer a free trial or a way to see how they teach, so I Googled the site for reviews. I have found that if the reviews only talk about how good the method is, but not how they teach you or why you will learn quickly, they are most likely written by the people selling the product. No trial lesson and no content review? It’s up to you.
World Word Exchange – Online – 2 lessons $ 12 – 4 lessons $ 20 – 8 lessons $ 32
This is a new site. His philosophy seemed solid, so I signed up and got a free lesson. The site has seventy-six lessons of twenty words each. The first lesson had the words: who, what, where, when, why and how, among others. These are useful one-word question words. I clicked on the words to hear a native speaker say them. What surprised me was that they first wrote the English word, then the English word, and then they have the native text. I listened and studied for a while and then went to his memory test. It is a multiple choice word game that challenges you to match the question word with eight other options. This is a great way to remember the words in my opinion. Repetition is how we remember.
The site also has a grammar section that explains how to use the words and there is a page to practice spelling. For people who already know a few words, there is a user lesson page where you can choose the words you want to learn. The site has great tools. The most impressive feature is the organization of the words you learn. Learning the most common words first is a feature that no other language method can find. The only downside to the site is that they only teach Mandarin Chinese, Spanish, and Thai. We hope that more languages will be added soon.
You decide what works for you.
Comments are welcome.