Rosetta Stone V3: Hebrew Level 1-3 Set with Audio Companion [OLD VERSION]

by Rosetta Stone

Product Features

• Rosetta Stone teaches you a new language naturally, by getting you to think, live and breathe the language
• Innovative solutions get you speaking new words, right from the start
• Rosetta Stone moves forward only when you're ready--you drive the pace, you set the schedule
• With Rosetta Stone, you'll discover a foundation of key vocabulary that you'll use to build into a whole new language
• Audio Companion lets you take the Rosetta Stone experience anywhere: in the car, at the gym, or on-the-go

Product Details

• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B001AFD5EC
• Item model number: 21385
• Date first available at Amazon.com: June 9, 2008
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,437 in Software (See Top 100 in Software)
  • #7 in Software > Education & Reference > Foreign Languages > Hebrew

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.

Communicate and connect with the world: Level 1, 2 & 3 Set.
Rosetta Stone Level 1, 2 & 3 Set will take you on a journey from the basics to a whole new level of sophistication. You'll build a foundation of fundamental vocabulary and essential language structure. You'll quickly gain the confidence to engage in social interactions. Say "hello" and "goodbye," arrange travel, order food, go shopping and more! From there, you'll share your ideas and opinions, express feelings and talk about your life, your interests and more. You'll discover a voice. In a new language.

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 Levels 1, 2 & 3 (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 Hebrew Levels 1, 2&3 you connect with the world around you. With level one you begin learning fundamental vocabulary and essential language structure, from greetings and introductions to simple questions and their answers. Gain the confidence and enter the intermediate level where you will be able to talk about your environment; give and get directions, tell time, dine out with self-reliance, shop and enjoy basic social interactions. Taking what you’ve learned in Levels 1 and 2, we help you reach an advanced level of competence. This competence allows you to connect with the world around you. You will learn to share your ideas and opinions, express your feelings and talk about everyday life; your work, current events 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

29 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars As a native speaker of Hebrew..., August 3, 2009

By 

G. Argov - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Rosetta Stone V3: Hebrew Level 1-3 Set with Audio Companion [OLD VERSION] (CD-ROM)

I was born in Israel and speak Hebrew at home. I took Arabic in college, and found it to be far more difficult than I expected, so I tried out my friend's copy of Rosetta Stone, which helped tremendously. Therefore, when my girlfriend said she's interested in learning Hebrew, I figured I'd get Rosetta Stone: Hebrew for her as a gift...

I didn't believe the gimmicks and hype of Rosetta Stone, but I really think it's a much better way to learn a language than the way I was taught in high school and college. In school, it was always about flashcards and memorization and writing lines of the same thing over and over. I have a good memory, so I'd remember vocabulary, but when it came time to conjugate verbs, or create my own sentences, I'd always be intimidated. Rosetta Stone was a much more natural way of learning the language since you match pictures with words, audio with text, and so on and so forth. My favorite part is that if you have a microphone (or webcam) the program can evaluate your pronunciation of words. THIS HELPS TREMENDOUSLY! I was shocked to hear how Israeli my American girlfriend sounded

I am not saying that if you buy Rosetta Stone you'll become fluent in another language immediately. What I am saying is that if you try your best and really commit several hours a week to learning a new language, there is no reason why you can't. The way the lessons are organized at first seem scattered and all over the place, but you end up learning a LOT at the end. The fact this program listens to your pronunciation (if you have a microphone), combined with its picture-matching approach to learning a language really helps immerse you in Hebrew. You'll sound like a sabra in no time :-)

19 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good, with some flaws, August 13, 2009

By 

Peter R. Chastain "perpetual student" (San José, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Rosetta Stone V3: Hebrew Level 1-3 Set with Audio Companion [OLD VERSION] (CD-ROM)

Despite serious flaws, this course is an efficient way to learn most of what I need to know. With the inductive method which Rosetta Stone calls Dynamic Immersion, all content is in Hebrew, forcing the student to think in Hebrew and allowing the formation of hypotheses, which are refined as more material is presented. I found this process of discovery both effective and fun.

Rosetta Stone courses are almost completely devoid of cultural content. The same photographs and the same words and sentences (translated, of course) are used for all languages. Aside from not teaching the student important cultural details, this approach ignores the fact that language affects how people think, and vice versa. Compare this to the French in Action course of Pierre Capretz, in which friends are sitting around an outdoor table and the first person to leave faces each of the others individually to say "au revoir," or to Modern Spanish (Harcourt, Brace & World, 1960), in which a boss tells his secretary that he never goes to communion and she replies that she always does, and we thus learn something about unspoken communication and the dynamics of power and sex in the Spanish-speaking world.

I reluctantly accept this lack of cultural information and the business model which makes it unlikely that we will ever see it in Rosetta Stone courses. Self-study cannot fully substitute for taking a class from a native speaker.

It seems to me that this course is not sufficiently "active." Most of the exercises are multiple-choice, in which Hebrew text and spoken word must be matched with pictures. I am not really forced to retrieve the word or phrase from my memory. I can work around this limitation a little bit, by spending some time repeating the phrases before advancing to the next screen, or by looking at a picture and figuring out the text before I look at it, but the course does not force me to do those things.

Rosetta Stone ads disparage flash cards, unfairly, I think. Flash cards are a great example of adaptive learning, in that I can decide how long to look at a card and where to replace it in the deck, based on whether I got the right answer and how much difficulty I had. The only way this course uses adaptive learning is in deciding when (immediately or on some future date) an entire lesson will be repeated. This approach really falls short in the writing (spelling) lessons. They consist of 6 screens, in each of which I must type 1 to 4 complete sentences. If I make a mistake, the first incorrect letter is highlighted. Eventually, I get that letter right, and then the next incorrect one is highlighted. When I finally get everything right, the software immediately erases what I just wrote and moves me onto the next sentence, destroying most of what little recollection I had of my correct answer. Absent inconvenient work-arounds, I often do not get to practice what I have just learned, until the next time I do the same or a different writing exercise.

It would not have been difficult for Rosetta Stone to make the writing lessons much more effective: if something takes me more than one try, leave my final, correct, answer on the screen until I push an OK button. Then give me that sentence again. When I get it right twice in a row, give me another sentence to spell, but then repeat the one that gave me problems. Continue the repetition, increasingly infrequently, as I reinforce my mastery.

The pronunciation exercises are a useful opportunity to practice speaking but are not very effective in detecting good or bad pronunciation. With the same setting of how strict the voice recognition should be, I sometimes have to repeat good pronunciation several times before it is accepted, and then, a few frames later, I badly flub my line and it is accepted.

I did not find the optional Audio Companion, CDs that you can listen to in your car, very useful. Dynamic immersion with no visual information does not work well for me, and I need not to be distracted while I am driving.

The course has an option to choose whether letters are displayed with or without vowel points and dageshes, the little marks that are below, above, or inside some letters to help with pronunciation. That is useful: pointed text is essential for students at my level of competence, but most Hebrew writing is unpointed. I wish there were another option, to change to a script (handwriting) font, pointed or unpointed. Script letters look different from printed ones, and it is important to learn them.

Initially (in 2008), I had numerous problems with the software. The Rosetta Stone technical support people were quite helpful, though I sometimes wished the development folks would release their bug-fixes more quickly. Version 3 seems to have been brought to market before it was quite ready. For the most part, everything is now fixed. I would recommend that anyone buying a Rosetta Stone course make sure that all available updates are applied, which is automatic if you check a box and have an Internet connection.

Despite its flaws, this course is working well for me. When I decide to study another language, I will probably buy a Rosetta Stone course for it.

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Lacks meaning!, May 7, 2010

By 

Tam Thompson "Tam Thompson" (Austin, TX USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Rosetta Stone V3: Hebrew Level 1-3 Set with Audio Companion [OLD VERSION] (CD-ROM)

As a native English speaker, I'm trying to learn Hebrew from Rosetta Stone and I'm missing so much of the meanings it's not even funny. There are NO translations, so if you can't guess what the picture means (an old car? a blue car? one car?) or guess at grammar, forget it. I would not recommend this product, and it is way overpriced. Nice concept, but it simply doesn't work for this adult.