Rosetta Stone V3: Arabic Level 1 with Audio Companion [OLD VERSION]

by Rosetta Stone

Product Features

• Rosetta Stone includes Audio Companion™ CDs to reinforce your language learning anytime any place.
• Included is a USB microphone headset that allows you to listen to the program and practice pronouncing words correctly while working with our proprietary speech recognition and analysis tools.
• The Contextual Formation™ feature uses real-world simulations to give you the benefits you need to succeed.
• The Adaptive Recall™ Language feature tracks progress to reinforce your strengths and revisit needs.
• Level 1 allows you to build a foundation of fundamental vocabulary and essential language structure.

Product Details

• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B001AFANZG
• Item model number: 20115
• Date first available at Amazon.com: June 9, 2008
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,163 in Software (See Top 100 in Software)
  • #11 in Software > Education & Reference > Foreign Languages > Arabic

Product Description

Amazon.com

Rosetta Stone Personal Edition contains everything you need to give the voice inside of you a new language. The method used recreates the natural way you learned your first language, revealing skills that you already have. This approach has won numerous awards, and has been adopted by countless organizations, schools and millions of users around the world. Join the language revolution today. Only with Rosetta Stone.

The comprehensive language-learning solution that fits your life.

Learn Naturally
Learn your next language the same way you learned your first language. Dynamic Immersion empowers you to see, hear and comprehend without translating or memorizing. You already have this ability. Rosetta Stone simply unlocks it.

Engage Interactively
Get feedback to move forward. You learn best by doing, and you'll apply what you've learned to get to the next step. Rosetta Stone adapts to your individual needs and skills, because you drive the program with your progress.

Speak Confidently
Start speaking immediately. From the very first lesson, you'll speak. You'll begin with essential basics, which form the building blocks of the language. Soon you'll create new sentences on your own, using words you've learned.

Have Fun
Best of all, Rosetta Stone is addictive. With every entertaining activity, you'll feel success. You'll want to use Rosetta Stone to have that next moment, that next breakthrough. So you'll keep using it, and you'll learn more!

That's language-learning success.
That's Rosetta Stone.

No translation or memorization required.

The most effective way to learn a new language is to be surrounded by it. When you were an infant, your parents taught you this way, by intuitively associating words with images. That's the ultimate language lab, but most language-learning programs completely ignore this.

Think about all of the ways you've tried to learn a language: classes at school, tapes and cassettes, even software that uses your native language as a base for your next one. What do they all have in common? Translation and memorization.

Instead of taking a "direct flight" from your brain to your new language, translation and memorization connects you to your old language. You always have to "fly" from your brain, to your native tongue ... and then translate what you've memorized to communicate.

That might work for a few words, but what happens when you get to a sentence or phrase? When you have to change tenses? You're going to make a lot of "connecting flights." That's why those other methods are so frustrating ... and why they fail.

Enter Dynamic Immersion.
This method encourages you to think like a baby. You'll pair words with vivid, real-life images and make connections between things you know and the new language. Soon, you'll be thinking in a new language, stringing words together into phrases that you create.

Innovative technology.
Rosetta Stone places this Dynamic Immersion method at the core of a suite of software that works with you to develop your skills. The simple, intuitive interface helps to keep you engaged in the solution, while advanced speech recognition technology makes certain that you're speaking correctly and accurately. Best of all, Rosetta Stone never leaves you behind. You'll only move forward when you're ready, when you've become comfortable and confident.

Discover the building blocks of a new language: Level 1.
Your journey begins with a foundation of fundamental vocabulary and language structure that you'll need to begin to think, live and breathe in your new language. Rosetta Stone's solution will give you the confidence to master basic conversational skills. You'll be able to introduce yourself, say "Hello" and "Goodbye," ask and answer simple questions, go shopping and so much more.

Audio Companion
With Audio Companion, you'll enhance the Rosetta Stone experience wherever you go. You'll learn new skills on the computer, and then reinforce what you've learned with Audio Companion. Simply play the CDs on a stereo or download them to a MP3 Player. Each Audio Companion activity corresponds to a lesson in the Rosetta Stone software, so you can turn your travel time into productive language-learning time.

Inside the box, you'll find:

• Version 3 Personal Edition CD-ROM software for Level 1 (Windows/Mac)
• Headset microphone
• User's guide
• Audio Companion, a multiple-CD set to play or download to your MP3 player

Product Description

Foreign language learning with Rosetta Stone Arabic Level 1 with Audio Companion includes everything you need to begin learning a new language—from grammar and vocabulary to basic sentence structure. It’s the foundation upon which your language-learning journey begins. Gain the confidence to master basic conversational skills, including greetings and introductions, simple questions and answers, shopping and much more. Now Rosetta Stone with Audio Companion allows the learner to take Rosetta Stone anywhere: in the car, the gym or on-the-go! What is Audio Companion? Audio Companion CDs are activities that correspond to the Rosetta Stone CD-ROM software lessons. The learner can listen to Audio Companion and practice what they’ve been learning on the computer, turning travel time into productive language learning time. Audio Companion lets the student access the power of Rosetta Stone lessons whenever and wherever they want, they can play the CD’s on a stereo, or download them to a MP3 player. It empowers the student and helps reinforce the lessons in any busy lifestyle!

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Please, please know what you're buying, July 10, 2010

By 

Sean - See all my reviews

This review is from: Rosetta Stone V3: Arabic Level 1 with Audio Companion [OLD VERSION] (CD-ROM)

Please read this before investing in this product.

I've studied Arabic for 3 years. I started my Arabic studies with a brief stint using Rosetta Stone, and I'm afraid that the glowing reviews on Amazon are clearly written by people who haven't spent any time in an Arabic-speaking country. The Arabic taught in Rosetta Stone is Al-FusHa, which roughly means "Elegant Arabic". That may sound like a pleasant way to start your studies, but if you wish to actually speak with Arabs, I strongly recommend that you refrain from investing in this product. Let's say you manage to finish the full three-level course. If you were to try and engage someone in conversation on the streets of Cairo or Dubai, you would sound something like this:

O Sir! Hast thou the hour?
(Translation: What time is it?)

Here's the kicker: they will barely, if at all, understand you. If they do understand, they giggle hysterically.

Here's the double kicker: You won't understand anyone. At all.

The problem is that learning a language requires active use of acquired knowledge by speaking, and the Arabic taught in Rosetta Stone is not spoken ANYWHERE in the Arab world except in prepared news reports by Al-Jazeera. It is a contrived spoken form that is based on the writing system. Rosetta Stone incorporates all the "case endings" which essentially are vowels at the end of each word that denote whether it is the subject, indirect object, direct object, adverb, etc. Case endings are archaic and very rarely spoken. You will spend months un-learning the case endings. Even the vocabulary is outdated. If you want to read the Qur'an, then by all means go for it. However, if communicating with Arabs, rather than translating old texts, is your goal, you should go down the other routes available:

1.) When starting from scratch, you can't do better than the book w/ DVD's Alif-Baa, which teaches the alphabet, basic vocabulary, and verbs.

2.) Pimsleur has good audio courses for Egyptian and Eastern Arabic. Michel Thomas Method Arabic is absolutely excellent but focuses exclusively on Egyptian Arabic (which is the most widely understood dialect), and doesn't teach the writing system.

3.) Google "GLOSS" by the Defense Language Institute. It's totally free and has more Arabic material by dialect than any resource I've found yet. However, it assumes that the learner is at a lower-intermediate level of study.

4.) Sign up for a free account at [...] (by Rosetta Stone) or [...], where you can find Arabs who will be happy to help you if you just help them with their English a little (75% of the users will speak English almost fluently). Plus, they can help answer some of the pesky questions you will come across. Talking via skype is one of the best ways to learn the language without a visa, and it's free.

5.) Al-kitaab fii ta'allum al-'Arabiyya is the best series for learning enough Arabic so that you can effectively communicate with most Arab people. They focus on Formal Spoken Arabic and they have plenty of good information on how the spoken dialects (especially Egyptian) differ from what they're teaching you. It's a classroom textbook, so you MUST buy the Answer Key that is also available on Amazon. Otherwise, you won't know if you're right or wrong about anything.

6.) Buy the Hans Wehr Arabic-English dictionary. There is no getting around this.

7.) Check out the free podcasts on iTunes for Arabic Students. They're pretty good, especially for learning how to phrase things more naturally and understanding flow-of-speech discourse.

And finally, the best advice ANYONE can give you about learning Arabic... drum-roll, please...

8.) If you are intent on learning Arabic, the best approach is some combination of the above recommendations that suits your specific goals. Arabic has a vast vocabulary and has some grammatical conventions according to region, so think about how you want to use it. Any combination of the resources listed above will get you further along than RS Arabic at about half the cost or less. In my experience, the reward of learning a new language is the ability to communicate with new people, which no amount of RS Arabic will enable you to do.

Lastly, don't shell out about a thousand dollars based on the review of a 19 year old kid who is getting a minor in Arabic. He's going to realize sooner or later that when it comes to communication, the Arabic taught in Rosetta Stone is to Spoken Arabic as a Shakespearean Comedy is to 30 Rock: One is something that is taught in classrooms as funny, whereas the other is something that actually is.

Good Luck!

22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Worth the price for someone interested, January 4, 2009

By 

Aeries (Virginia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Rosetta Stone V3: Arabic Level 1 with Audio Companion [OLD VERSION] (CD-ROM)

I normally don't bother reviewing the products I use, but I felt that the only other review on this item was overly harsh and a poor reflection of the quality of the product. This was my first Rosetta Stone product, and I haven't even had it a full week, but I am excited with what I've learned so far, and eager to learn more.

At first, the lesson was somewhat frustrating since it throws you into a completely new language with an unfamiliar alphabet. The first time through unit 1, lesson 1, part 1, I mostly guessed and felt somewhat overwhelmed. I figured that if the entire program was set up with each lesson being just as hard, I wouldn't learn anything. But I was wrong. I went through the first part of the first lesson twice, picking up some patterns the second time through. Then I moved on to the second part and discovered that the following parts in the lesson better explain the first part, and help with pronunciation and character recognition.

Since then I have worked through the sections diligently. Yes, it can be frustrating at times. The native speakers don't all have the same dialect, so pronunciation of words sometimes varies. Also, it seems that sometimes I can't seem to say a word right, though I feel like I am. While irritating, I've found that if I take a break and come back to it, I can usually get by ok. And then I'll go back and do it the next day. While no where close to any sort of fluency, or really much of an ability to hold a conversation, I can see that if I continue to work through it I will be able to in a relatively short period of time.

As far as the price goes, certainly it is pricey, but I think it is a worthwhile investment for anyone who truly wants to learn a new language. Sure, over $200 is steep, but consider the cost and hassle of taking a new language as a class or through a private tutor. Short of someone you know, you'd probably spend well over $200, and for a class, you would have to schedule around a time to take the class, whereas with RS, you get the convenience to go at your own pace in your own free time.

In the end, I think Rosetta Stone is very much worth the investment, and I expect I will use it to learn the other languages that interest me, as well as all levels of Arabic.

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Don't listen to "language teachers", This works!, April 3, 2009

By 

TM "Y" (SoCal) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Rosetta Stone V3: Arabic Level 1 with Audio Companion [OLD VERSION] (CD-ROM)

I took a chance on this software because I had read the bad reviews on amazon. I needed to learn Arabic for my minor and I wanted a head start. Take it from an 19 year old guy who hates learning languages: This software works! I just have level 1 right now, and after only one core lesson and it's follow up lessons (roughly an hours time) I can now identify several verbs, their female/male counterparts, nouns, individual letters, and a lot more to come. This makes learning a language seem obsolete. With Rosetta Stone, you understand the language. You don't need to memorize anything because you begin to associate words, sounds, and letters together with pictures and native speakers to reach a level of comprehension that seems impossible through normal studying. I hate learning languages and this was actually fun. It allows you to work at your own pace and do things as many times as you want until you get it right. Language teachers probably can't learn it because they are too busy with their own methods to be open minded to this software. If you want to learn Arabic, or any other language for that matter, GET ROSETTA STONE! It's made a believer out of a cynic.