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Average Customer Review:

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

Good program for memorizing and reviewing, May 28, 2004

Every program has some advantages and disadvantages, strengths and weaknesses, so I have found this program most useful for associating words with ideas - after all it does contain 8000 pictures. The complete beginner in Chinese may initially make good progress, but then get stuck because the program doesn't contain any grammatical explanations.

I have found Pimsleur Chinese better for developing conversational proficiency. Ultimate Mandarin Chinese book and CDs would provide great addition to new learning because that course fills in the gap which deals with some essential grammar that takes out confusion. A little bit of understanding can greatly accelerate one's progress with Chinese.

Rosetta Stone Chinese has only "pinyin", so if you wish to learn how to read and write Chinese, you'll have to get some other book.

I do think that Rosetta Stone programs could be greatly improved with at least some basic grammatical explanations. For Chinese, it would also be nice, if the Chinese characters were provided. Nevertheless, in spite of all the missing elements that would be very helpful, I have still found this program very helpful for learning Chinese.

21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

Excellent approach, but needs adaptation for Chinese, June 7, 2003

I will say up front that I have not used this entire CD. I have only done the first lesson from the program, which I downloaded for free from the RosettaStone.com web site.

The learning style presented in the Rosetta Stone series really is as good as they say it is. I like the direct presentation of the Chinese and the concept, without English text explaining the grammar, usage, and so on. I also like the amount of repetition that is built into the exercises. Somehow that approach seems to place the language deeper into your brain, if that makes sense. The "game" like style is also fun.

While I was working with it, my one year old son was learning English, and it was quite clear to me that the Rosetta Stone style really is just like a child's first language acquisition. In fact, I felt that working with the program helped me to understand and help my child with his English learning process.

Although I like this learning style, I think it would be an improvement if there were an accompanying guide showing the meanings in English, Chinese characters, and pinyin. A guide would also come in handy if you wanted to work separately with a tutor. Then you could show the tutor a list of phrases and sentances you know so they could practice them with you. For what you pay for this software, it would be nice.

I do have one major complaint about the program - it is not adapted to Chinese. From looking at the free downloads of each language of Rosetta Stone, it is clear that exactly the same concepts are taught in the same order in each language. For example, The first four phrases you learn are "a girl", "a boy", "a cat", and "a dog", whether you are learning English or Swahili. The program is not adapted to the languages individually.

The concept behind the program is that only one new word or phrase is introduced at a time, and the accompanying illustration makes the meaning clear, so your mind can make the association. The problem is that in Chinese the sentance structure can be very different than the Romance languages. For example, in part six of lesson one, you see a picture of a man on a horse accompanied by the sentance "yi ge qi zai ma shang de nan ren". Up till that point the only relevent phrases you have learned are "A Man," and "A Horse". In the English Rosetta Stone program, the phrase accompanying this picture is "A man on a horse." So clearly, the intention is that you learn the new word "on". But, in Chinese the sentance is, literally translated, "A riding located horse top man." So the student is presented with three new words, "riding", "located", and "top," with no clues to figure out what they mean either individually or in that sentance.

I get the impression that they developed the template of this program to work well for the romance languages, and then just decided to make extra money by having translators translate the sentances into umpteen languages, regardless of whether the template works in those other languages.

I think it would be a mistake for a beginner to try to learn Chinese using only this program - it would be very slow and frustrating. But the program would be very helpful used in conjunction with a class or tutor. I have not seen any similar programs out there that are better designed for Chinese, so it could be that Rosetta Stone is still your best bet if you like the interactive, total-immersion learning style.

3 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

Not helpful for me, November 6, 2004

Like another user before me, I checked out the free Mandarin demo on the Rosetta website. It was quite a fiasco as I was completely lost after two or three lessons. You learn to identify certain things by looking at them, but I don't find this helpful at all, partly because of the incompetence of the photographer. Very often the men and women looked like each other and the boys and girls did as well, so if you ask me to click on "the boy is riding a horse" and the picture is shot from about 20 feet away, is it any surprise that I would be confused? And to worsen things as the lessons went on, there was no English explanation of any parts of speech. In lesson 1, you learn that "yi ge nan hai er" refers to a boy. I would GUESS that the "nan" part refers to the boy, but is it "this is a boy" or "that is a boy" or "it is a boy" that the rest of the sentence means? For all I know, it could mean "the boy is standing" or "the boy is smiling," how at all am I expected to decipher something like this??? I don't recommend this unless you already know a bit of Chinese and you just want to drill yourself or something. Otherwise give it a pass and try some Pimsleur or something.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

Great program AFTER you know some basic Chinese, October 27, 2004

I was initially using this program through Rosetta Stone's online service (off and on for about a year). I went through the entire program several times, but have decided that I like it enough and have finally purchased it.

The program does not contain a single word in English and you'll get nowhere fast relying only on the intuitive method. OK, the beginning lessons that teach you just how to say simple words may be fine, but then enter the "measure words" (if you don't know anything about measure words, you'll feel lost because it will make no sense to you), and then enters a word order which is simple, but somewhat different in Chinese.

You'll get out of all that confusion by using some basic grammar book and a good pinyin dictionary. It will help you tremendously to move through Rosetta Stone's program.

Now, that I've purchased this program, I was delighted that the two books which are included contain pinyin as well as Chinese characters (both simplified and long form). Even these characters will seem too much, unless you have gone through some other books and programs learning how to write them (I recommend Easy Chinese Tutor CD to begin with).

Now, that you're armed with all the additional tools, progressing through this program will be a piece of cake. The first time I attempted to work with Rosetta Stone, I got nowhere fast. So, I put it aside for a while and went through the Pimsleur Program first - that helped tremendously.

That being said, this program is not geared toward absolute beginners - you'll find it much more enjoyable after you have some basic Chinese under your belt.

The program will expand your vocabulary and help you to memorize lots of words, after you already understand basic sentence structure and some essential grammar in Chinese.

I have been using it in the same way I'd use watching movies in a foreign language to enhance comprehension, learn more words and the use of those words in different contexts. For beginner to intermediate student of Chinese, working with Rosetta Stone program is simply much easier than the comprehension you'll get from watching Chinese movies.