[OLD ASIN] Rosetta Stone: Learn Chinese (Mandarin) for 12 months on iOS, Android, PC, and Mac [Activation Code by Mail]

The media could not be loaded.  I got this Rosetta Stone Learn Chinese for 12 mo, which was a card w an activation code and simple directions for accessing the Rosetta Stone site. I called the company and asked if I could take another language, and they told me just to sign in per the directions on the card, and that I could pick any language I wanted from their menu at registration, as well as the currency type i use and "support" language (the language you prefer to speak when asking them for assistance). You can download the whole series onto your computer as well once you're in (My Account pull down menu), but you won't have the interactive capabilities of live tutoring or chatting w others onlline. I looked at the chatroom, and it shows who is currently logged in, including yourself, and the discussion at the time I logged in was related to whether or not there was actually live tutoring. There seemed to be some controversy surrounding this, and some students were not able to schedule a live session and had even heard that it had been discontinued....*I decided to take Spanish (Spain), to complement my Pimsleur Spanish series, which I had been listening to for a year mainly on my commute (on level 5 now), and which is Spanish Latin American. I found this Rosetta Stone quite different from Pimsleur, in that while Pimsleur is primarily an audio listen /repeat/ translate format, Rosetta Stone uses many separate learning strategies, such as writing, picture prompts/ recognition, gaming (fill-in-the blank/ pull-down menu, choose the correct picture), reading as you listen, all while using one or more of these strategies in combination. Additionally, they make use of your built-in (or other you provide) microphone, almost like a language" karaoke," where you are judged and graded on your pronunciation as you repeat what they say. You have the option of how much detail or help you want with sounding out words at the time you start, and you have the option of choosing various lesson types -core lesson, speaking, grammar, reading, etc... in your main menu (see last pic), and you can skip around and/or go back to where you left off. All this provides a more immersive and realistic language learning experience. I'm not knocking Pimsleur however, which I also love because I can use it anywhere. I think Rosetta Stone is a fine program with a lot of thought and effort put into it by it's creators. Outside of going to a country and living there, and barring family and friends who will only speak to you in the language you want to learn, this Rosetta Stone series may be one of the best ways to start learning a language.*I'm not clear about the tutoring issue the chatroom was discussing, and whether it is actually available, as I am not interested in that aspect yet. I may update this review later depending on whether I use that feature in the future.

This is a language learning program specifically for Mandarin, that is meant to be pretty much a stand alone product. Buying this will give you *access* to the materials only for 12 months (when I activated this card it was 24 months, however I assume it will eventually be 12 because that's what the card says). Therefore, upon buying this, you download the software from the site and activate it to your particular language. Although there are many language options available for you when you download the program, this 'key' will only work in Mandarin.Since Rosetta is quite ubiquitous in the language learning world, I'm sure you know its functions. For those that do not it's roughly a picture association program, where you will have to 'match' phrases and words together. The words and phrases can either be in Pinyin, or Simplified/Traditional (Hanzi). You will also have the opportunity to speak, through your microphone, which will then be dissected a bit by Rosetta to see if you got the overall tone right.That being said above, the overall usefulness of Rosetta (specifically for Mandarin) is a bit on the low side for English speakers. I've been studying Mandarin on-and-off for a few years, and have went through a variety of tutelages -- digital and non-digital. My recommendation for learning, that really helped me, was constant 'class-type' study, with the majority of 'work load' being on yourself (at least 1 hour a day). What put me over the 'hump' in learning Mandarin (the hump, after which the language becomes less 'arcane' and more a seriously possibility to begin learning), was to learn and hear the 'tones' and understand the meaning behind the words you try to memorize.I could never get there with Rosetta. Of course, Rosetta does teach you tones, and probably would allow you to understand them on the surface. However, the speakers in Rosetta are very slow and do not help you either in listening or replicating their speaking. You need to start fairly early in listening to fairly normal paced Mandarin speakers if you are to really be able to distinguish how they talk. Moreover, speaking slowly won't help you much either. In addition to the latter points, there is essentially no syntax explanation of any of the phrases. You need syntax explanation in order to properly form sentences. And you need to know quantifiers in intermediate sentence structures, which isn't covered here.For beginning learners, I really wouldn't recommend Rosetta. If you are wanting to be able to say a few quick phrases, then this would be an appropriate program for you, just not if you are going to be even somewhat serious about learning Mandarin. I would recommend some good eDX courses along side some self-tutelage (or a teacher) and a good grammar book. With Mandarin, learn the tones first, the different ways to pronounce their consonants/verbs second and sentence structure third. Mandarin is not as hard as it seems for English speakers. That role would probably go to Cantonese or Vietnamese, to name a few.