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From:Rosetta Stone
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See Product Page
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User Rating: Amazon Sales Rank:#2065 |
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 Incredible New Version, 2008-11-20
The newest version of Rosetta Stone Russian is a complete "redo." The learning design and course structure, the approach, and organization of the new version makes this tool indispensable to anyone who really wants to learn to speak Russian. The courses are now multidimensional in that they take you through logical exercises in listening, reading, writing, grammar instruction, and pronunciation that reinforce all of the concepts presented in a given lesson. This repetition in different contexts drives the learning concepts deep into one's brain and makes the language stick. Where other versions simply unloaded you into mindless dull-plodding through sometime bizarrely useless sentences (like "The boy wearing pants throws the rake"), here the concepts consistently build upon each other in very useful ways. Immediately, the mind begins to apply the concepts to similar expressions and the new language begins to make sense, almost as if it is an extension of the native tongue. This tool is a major ticket to learning to speak and understand Russian and, more important, to understanding how the language works so you can apply its concepts to virtually any situation.
9 of 9 customers found the following review helpful:
Pretty good stuff, 2008-08-24
Rosetta Stone Russian levels 1,2, and 3 is a tremendous adjunct to the study of this language. However, I would NOT recommend it unless you have considerable background and knowledge of Russian already, as it moves rapidly from one concept and many new words without any explanation in English (and often the accompanying pictures are not completely explanatory). I've already mastered Pimsleur's Russian I, II, and III (90 30-minute lessons), plus another Russian course with 40 lessons, and still I find myself in the English-Russian dictionary a half-dozen times at each Rosetta Stone session. It's this small a number because I already know some 4,000 words in Russian. I don't know how anyone with less background functions at all in the Rosetta Stone course. That being said, once a person has a background similar to mine, the course is hugely helpful in building speech proficiency, mastery of grammar, and expanding one's vocabulary. I would not recommend the course for one's first exposure to the Russian language, as it would have to be a formula for extreme frustration. For me, it's been extremely profitable and enjoyable.
11 of 16 customers found the following review helpful:
 Bamboozle, 2008-08-01
A friend bought the Russian-language Rosetta Stone. He is very persistent, so he went through the entire course, thoroughly and patiently. Now the results are in! And since I am a native Russian speaker, here is my assessment:
He does not understand Russian even when I speak slowly using simple words and constructs, and when he is trying to say something in Russian, it's all gibberish. He can say short phrases such as "A woman on a horse" or "A boy is under the ball" but nothing beyond that - I am guessing that those are the phrases in the software.
Money and time wasted.
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