Customer Reviews

Rosetta Stone V2: Turkish Level 1 [OLD VERSION]

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The Rosetta Stone method teaches you language the way you learned it as a child - by associating words to visuals. There are no translations in the program, so you really have to do the mental work to understand what is being presented to you. In that way it's a great program.

For me, one of the drawbacks is that the same visuals and phrases are repeated over and over within a lesson. This has the effect of reducing lessons to a Concentration game, where you are remembering which words go with which picture, rather than actually absorbing why you are saying what you are saying, or how what you are saying works as a structured language. I find I have to force myself to be more deliberate when completing the exercises.

Another drawback is that after completing fifteen lessons there still has not been any exercise where I have been asked to construct a phrase on my own. As such, the program is good for building reading, listening comprehension, and pronunciation skills, but not for speaking.

The most fascinating aspect of the course is how different Turkish is from Romance and Germanic languages. Really the only things they have in common are the Roman alphabet and some cognates. Turkish manages to feel ancient while still living. Consider this: the word for man is "adam".

Overall I would say this product is by far the most disciplined teaching tool I have seen for Turkish. It is equal to a semester of language instruction in terms of the number of lessons and the time required to complete them all. And for this reason alone I would say that the price is right.

I've used Rosetta stone to learn french, and the product was wonderful. With languages such as french and spanish, you can use your own english skills to infer the meaning of some sentences when confusions arises, but with languages like arabic, turkish, japanese etc., this process is much less useful, and even impossible for some.
When I first got this Turkish program, I was frustrated by the confusing sentences with just a picture to understand its meaning... basically i couldnt understand the details of grammar and could only proceed because I recognized some nouns, though not the suffixes attached to them which is a common practice in Turkish. By itself, this program was almost a waste of money, but then I picked up the turkish course from the "teach yourself" series, and together these two programs are amazing... use the rosetta stone for vocab, and when you're confused use the teach yourself book (the turkish course is one of the best in the teach-yourself series). If you're going to spend about $200 on this program, pick up the teach yourself book for another $15 or $20 and you'll find that learning turkish will be MUCH easier than using either program by itself.

rosetta stone was great for building vocabulary and comprehension. but as other reviewers have said, a book explaining turkish grammar is essential to have in addition to rosetta stone. because rosetta stone is an incomplete turkish course, $200 is a bit pricy, but if you have some spare money, it makes getting familiar with the turkish language and building vocabulary worlds easier. books are tedious and hard to remember, but the audio and visual parts of rosetta stone help so much, and the sound quality and rate of speech (not too fast) is excellent. after reviewing a few chapters in 'teach yourself turkish', for example, i review some sections of rosetta stone, applying the grammar i learned from the book, and the grammar sticks in my head MUCH better. in sum, if it wont hurt your wallet too much, rosetta stone is a recommended supplement to turkish language books.

After my first lesson I was able to understand and speak more than over a years worth of personal training.
I first learned of the product from an airline publication and was "bargain" hunting for the same product. Amazon saved me almost 50% off what the airline publication was charging!!!
The lesons are complete and very easy to follow. Hats off to Amazon!!

Folks: the reviewer that mentioned Pimsleur was comparing the way the two companies APPROACH LESSONS. The language is irrelevant. And the reviewer was correct- Pimsleur's approach for language study is more like being in a high school class where you act like a parrot and simply learn memorize structure rules. The Rosetta products are much more effective because there are decision processes involved (among other things) that help you immerse yourself in the language vs repetition.

Having taken the entire Pimsleur Spanish course and having begun Rosetta Stone Turkish (20 lessons so far), I prefer the Pimsleur approach for the following reasons:

1) Pimsleur is an audio CD course that you can take while driving; Rosetta Stone requires a computer.

2) Rosetta Stone has the user match sentences with pictures. This creates a visual link, which is a good thing; but it emphasizes words that can be pictured over other words. For instance, even after 20 lessons, I would have no idea of how to say everyday phrases (hello, thank you, etc.) if I hadn't supplemented the course with a phrasebook. Pimsleur also teaches other useful phrases ("by the way", "you're right") that would be difficult to teach through Rosetta Stone's approach.

3) The Pimsleur course teaches Language X for English speakers and provides translations of all new words. The Rosetta Stone course is simply Language X, with no translations. This can lead to confusion. For example, a picture associated with a sentence may show one object on top of another. Does the preposition in the sentence mean "above" or "below"? It's helpful to have a dictionary handy to clear up these problems.

4) The Pimsleur course very systematically introduces about seven new words in each lesson. A Rosetta Stone lesson is highly variable - a couple of new words in one, and more than 25 in another.

5) Most importantly, the Pimsleur course is always asking the user to create and speak a sentence in the foreign language. Rosetta Stone doesn't do this, and thus does a mediocre job of teaching one how to speak a language as well as how to read and listen to it.

Another reviewer correctly states that Pimsleur does not yet have a Turkish course, but that should change soon; as of 12/06, Amazon is offering Pimsleur Turkish for "pre-order."

The previous commenter: Your stupid Pimsleur does not even have a Turkish program. Wake up before dropping a line!!!