5 October 2011 Learning outside of the classroom: Rosetta Stone
Being a full-time university student takes a lot of your time up. Being a disabled full-time university student makes it even harder to find spare time – spending an extra hour commuting from home, tacking on an extra few minutes to walk between classes, transcribing lecture recordings into notes...suffice to say, my plate is very full! I have often considered enrolling in distance-learning classes, as I’m pretty sure it would make my life a whole lot easier, but I have never worked up the courage to try it.
As a Hispanic Studies (Spanish, in layman’s terms) student, I have always been extremely interested in picking up new languages. I’ve already tried French, German, Latin and Italian in school or university, and I’m always up for trying new ones. So when I was given the chance to learn Greek with Rosetta Stone, I jumped at the chance.
A number of things about the Rosetta Stone software really appealed to me. Firstly, the idea of flexible learning: being able to study a subject from the comfort of your own home, without having to trek into a classroom for how ever many hours a week. My university offers a number of extracurricular language classes, but I have found that they are at very awkward times for me to commute in for a class, for example, at 5pm, and it takes me an hour to get home from campus. I remember taking an Italian class in first year, which left me on campus having to wait for my mother to pick me up at 6pm! While timings often mean that classroom-based learning can be very restrictive for me, with the software, I found that I could open the programme and fit in a couple of units in and around my life, before classes, in the evenings...I could spend longer on it when I had more spare time, or leave it for a bit until I could find more time.
The fact that I wouldn’t have to take notes like in a normal class was also a benefit for me. I normally use a dictaphone (which I received with my Disabled Student’s Allowance) to record my classes, and transcribe my notes in my own time. Even though I can take my time doing this, it can still tire me out, and so I find this aspect of studying really tedious. The Rosetta Stone programme being entirely computer-based was great for me. Although I still found myself wanting to take notes (chalk it up to 11 years of traditional methods of classroom language learning!), I became used to the no-note-taking method. I actually found it a lot more enjoyable, as I did not have to worry about my arm hurting from all the writing, or about having to transcribe my notes later, and instead focus on the content of the lessons.
Aside from advantages in terms of accessibility and ease of use, another part of the programme I really enjoyed was the approach to language study that the programme took. I like the pictorial-based approach (i.e. learning vocabulary and sentences through pictures), as opposed to a bog-standard text-based approach like most classroom language lessons, which made learning more fun. Reading large chunks of text can often give me a headache (especially reading it off a computer), so learning by pictures was a refreshing change. Having worked as an English language teacher in Spain for a year, I know from experience that more interactive method of learning such as this are more productive, and I definitely thought this when I used the software.
I also enjoyed the fact that it wasn’t entirely geared towards a final exam. At the end of the Unit 1, there was a little picture-book-style test, where you, as the user, become part of the story and use the vocabulary you have learned in the past unit to fill in the blanks. You are also given the chance to book a Studio Session, where you can practice the vocabulary of the unit you’ve just learned in a one-to-one environment with a native speaker. Although I found this daunting at first, as you have to spend the entire session talking in the new language, my teacher was very nice and extremely helpful, and I found it very productive. Often in classroom lessons I can feel lost, and it can be hard to stop and ask for help or assistance, especially in a classroom of 15 or 20 other able-bodied students. Whereas with this kind of one-to-one environment, I could practice any problems I had and keep the focus on me (not trying to sound self-absorbed or anything!). Even though each mini-unit also ended in a ‘mini-test’ of sorts, I didn’t feel pressured to study for an exam (I don’t tend to function well in exam conditions!), and again I felt like I learned more as I didn’t have to worry about being ‘graded’.
Being a connoisseur (of sorts!) of languages, I’ve tried lots of different methods of language learning, and in the very short time that I’ve been using the software this has been one of the most successful and useful methods I’ve used. However, I’m not saying that I’m now fluent in Greek! This sort of programme is great for learning the basics of any foreign language. I haven’t progressed to a more advanced level of the programme, and perhaps if I do I’ll find that I’m reaching the same sort of level of competency that I have with Spanish; but for now, with the basics, this programme has been great.
Overall, my experiences of using the Rosetta Stone software have been very positive. The flexible nature of learning through the software and the easy-to-use interface of the programme itself, as well as the creative content and presentation, all made my language learning experience very enjoyable. As a disabled person, I would definitely recommend it to anyone wanting to have a go at languages via ‘distance-learning’.
2 Comments
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Catherine Gillies replied on 5 Oct 2011 at 16:51Report abuse
Interesting, I did a crash course in German basically (never did it at high school) at university first year (i passed) but Rosetta Stone sounds like a better approach especially if you want to learn the basics without that pressure that you have in class. And they do latin which i wouldnt mind doing since i'm at uni doing archives. I tweeted your blog post btw.
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Sivamathy Selvakumaran replied on 5 Oct 2011 at 19:38Report abuse
Hi Catherine! Glad you found my blog post interesing :) If you want to pick up Latin around your uni schedule, I'd definitely try the RS software. I've studied Latin at school, I'm not sure if the software would be more 'conversational' Latin (as it were, even though it's a dead language!), but classroom-Latin can get really boring really quickly, this would probably be more fun and interesting to learn!
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