Ooo! Rosetta Stone Irish! I’m psyched!!
We’re using Rosetta Stone Portuguese right now and enjoying it a lot. You do have to be creative with it though. We’re in level one and so far it’s all sentences in the present tense. “The boy is jumping.” “The kids are standing on the table.” “The elephant is walking.” “The airplane is flying.”
So after each lesson we make up our own sentences. “The airplane is walking.” “The kids are standing on the table and the table is flying.” “The elephant is jumping on the boy.”
15 yrs ago I was learning Portuguese for the first time. It was an ideal learning environment and in 4 years I became fairly fluent. I had–
- several college classes
- tutoring from Brazilians
- immersion experience
- a series of 36 tapes from Audio-Forum
- “mix tapes” of music from Brazilian friends
At the end of 4 yrs I was able to understand and participate in conversations, even make some dumb jokes!
The Audio-forum tapes were brutally boring, but they gave practice in saying a near-infinite number of variations on basic stock sentences. That’s what gave the fluency.
“My uncle’s book is on the table” [glasses]
“My uncle’s glasses are on the table” [alarm clock]
“My uncle’s alarm clock is on the table” etc.
Hanging out with Brazilian friends gave the visual aspect of learning. “What’s this?” “That’s a lefthanded smokeshifter”
They also taught me the joy of the language-- slang and puns and lyrics to songs.
“Immersion” gave me familiarity with that sensation of sheer panic when someone spouts off an impassioned monologue (you only understand half the words) and then looks at you expectantly, waiting for your reply. You’re on the spot! OK, now…think on your feet…try to say something intelligent!
Rosetta Stone can’t possibly cover all those bases, but it does a fair job with several.
You are constantly looking at pictures. For the “my uncle’s book is on the table” type drill, you would see pictures of situations featuring the book, the table, the alarm clock, the glasses. In this way the sound and the image are linked in your brain, without you needing to do a translation step in between.
They also do a bit of “immersion”. Ex. in the middle of the uncle’s book on the table exercise, you would see an unfamiliar object on the table, and hear a new sentence. Then you have to think on your feet using this new information even though you’re not sure what it all means yet. Finally after a few more pictures you realize “Ah! they’re talking about a lefthanded smokeshifter”
I can only imagine what the “immersion” type exercises are like for Rosetta Stone Irish.
