Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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27 of 27 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Closest you'll ever get to learning Hindi without a guru!, December 29, 2005
One of the big minuses is the program runs from CD ROM, not the hard disk, so it will run based on the spin speed of the CD ROM.
Initial set up was slightly cumbersome. Initially, you install the main program through an "application disk" and then you insert the language disk to operate the program. If you are running virtual drives through some emulation software, be it from Microsoft, Daemon tools, Virtual drive, etc, there will be conflicts and the program will not run. These virtual disks must be disabled or exited prior to running the software.
Once you get started, the learning begins. The interface is intuitive but you need to save a profile to maintain your progress. Other users can log in to monitor their progress. Pictures are generic and not culturally congruent which is stated on their website and would make the product cost prohibitive.
Units are separated down into listening, reading, listening and reading, speaking and typing. There are 8 units with 11 to 12 levels each. Preview lessons are available to teach you new vocabulary and script. You really need to go through every module in a lesson to master that level (e.g. listening skills, reading skills, etc).
Typing lessons involve listening to a phrase and putting script into the correct order. This is more of a challenge to recognize which symbols will represent the phonetic sound and requires a lot of repetition. You will need to practice learning each word and script closely.
Within a lesson, the initial vocabulary is taught by matching spoken word to an object. Photos and written text can be toggled on and off so the "flash cards" can have any combination of appearances (e.g. pictures only, pictures and text, text only). Each lesson builds upon each learned word through teaching more complex phrases. At the end of each lesson, you are given a composite score but results are not tabulated for progress. Scores are tabulated based on self assessment tests for each lesson.
Pronounciation sections compare your spoken voice with a native speaker based on tone, speed, etc. The closer you are to green, the more you sound like a native speaker. The closer you are to red, well...your work is cut out for you. This is a little bit more difficult with longer phrases but you can listen to the native speaker at normal, slower tempo and even slowest tempos to get the pronounciation correctly.
The method involves learning words and texts without having to translate back into English or learning lists of words. This concept is similar to how we learned our native language as a child. This innovative method is a great opportunity to learn a foreign language for virtually any age of individual.
While not an all inclusive tool, this method helps facilitate a great learning environment. Colloquial Hindi and Teach Yourself Hindi are excellent choices that are complementary to this program.
Hindi is one of a handful of Rosetta Stone Titles that have only level 1 available.
You have 6 months to decide whether this program works out for you and you are refunded the cost of the software minus the shipping. A caveat is that this must be purchased through the publisher DIRECTLY, not from a third party.
My recomwmendation is to have more Levels available for the Hindi version in the NEAR FUTURE and a picture glossary would be helpful. The companion text is completely in Devanagari My main reason for 4 stars is that only one level is available. If newer levels are added, I would rate it 5 stars.
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22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Very useful program, January 3, 2006
This is a great program and I wish Rosetta Stone creates Level 2 also. The phrases in this program are written in Devanagiri (Hindi script) and you may find it easier to follow what is written if you also get a book "Teach yourself beginner's Hindi script". For the sake of making sense of grammatical constructions, unless you get the actual book on grammar, Colloquial Hindi may help you.
Rosetta Stone programs are intended to help you learn intuitively, mainly by associating images to what you hear. However, since no language consists only of words and images, trying to pick something relying only on your intuition may take a while before you can make sense of more complex sentences, than if you also get a book that explains some basic grammar and sentence construction.
While you can learn a lot by just guessing what's going on, Rosetta program is even more useful in helping you to remember words through association with images. It is also lots of fun learning a new language that way. Once you're done with this program, you can continue enriching your knowledge of Hindi and learning through association by watching Hindi movies.
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15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
better than most, but not nearly what it could be, October 14, 2006
Depending on your learning style, this might be the best non-classroom language learning method out there. This software offers you two advantages over learning from a book/cassette that make it easily worth the cost. First, you get to hear the words as they are introduced, and see a picture of what they describe. This simultaneously engages auditory and visual learning processes. Second, the extensive practice options essentially set your learning methodology for you (no need to make your own flashcards, etc), which makes this a fairly stress-free, almost passive process.
The most effective section of this seems to be the multiple choice word recall. A full sentence (or in the very beginning, word or phrase) is spoken, and you click on which of four images you think the sentence represents. While you may be able to choose the correct image without understanding every word in the sentence or the subject and verb endings, you eventually pick this up through repetition and context. I actually went through these exercises by cold guessing at first, and learning by trial and error. In this way, language learning emulates a real-world setting.
The speaking practice allows you to compare a sound wave of your own speaking with that of a native speaker. This in itself isn't very useful, and I guess it's just a primitive evolution of sound recognition technology that may some day in the future be able to automatically judge your ability to speak.
The writing practice is somewhat helpful, as it allows you to click and choose preset words in order to construct a sentence. However, this is not as helpful as writing the words yourself with pen and paper.
My biggest criticism is that this software doesn't really explore the possibilities that computer automation affords, and really feels just like a transcription of traditional self-teaching methodologies. For example, the only "random" element is the shuffling of words in sets of four. If Amazon can remember which types of books you like to read and make reasonable recommendations for what you might be interested in, the technology for enabling a language review, sensitive to the strengths/weaknesses of the current user, should actually be an easier challenge for a software developer.
My other main criticism is that the performance tracking system is very primitive. Nowhere is there a report-card style overview of your progress/performance in the system. You can log in and export your test scores, but this feature merely allows you to export a sequential listing of your scores by exercise.
Overall, though, if there's better software out there, I don't know about it.
If you're really serious about Hindi, I'd recommend buying this in conjunction with two other resources. "Unforgettable Languages" is a surprisingly effective vocabulary builder available for $11- it's limited to 200 words, and there's no audio guide to pronunciation, but it's a fast method (do a Google search to find it). Also, Teach Yourself Beginner's Hindi Script ($13) is very useful even if you don't plan on writing Hindi script, as being able to read the script will enhance your ability to pronounce the words taught in Rosetta Stone.
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