Rosetta stone

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polyglotponderings
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Re: Rosetta stone

Postby polyglotponderings » Wed Mar 22, 2017 6:32 pm

What do you all think about using Rosetta Stone for children, specifically elementary age? While for an adult there are a lot more efficient ways to learn, kids may not be able to go through at Teach Yourself, Assimil, or other book/course geared towards adult self learners. I think it would even be difficult for younger kids to use Duolingo as there are not pictures and too much typing.

I don't know of any other program that is geared towards children, and at $179 for the download for 5 levels (sometimes even cheaper during sales), it seems much less costly than tutoring. I saw a video of a guy that said he made it all of the way through the French course and was able to understand movies (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGmfvR9ffAM). That seems very good if a child were able to make that kind of progress.

Does anyone have any experience with children using this? Or what another program might be useful for kids?
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Cavesa
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Re: Rosetta stone

Postby Cavesa » Wed Mar 22, 2017 8:25 pm

polyglotponderings wrote:I don't know of any other program that is geared towards children,


There are plenty of resources for children, it is a growing market, since more and more parents are opting for langauge classes from early age. Sure, the courses vary in quality, and my best one was quite a traditional French course for elementary schools, which gave us all a solid base, considering our age. Many courses these days share the same mistakes the courses for adults have. The courses for adults tend to be too dumbed down for adults, and the courses for kids tend to be too dumbed down for the kids of the intended target age. Don't underestimate the very young people.

And don't forget that kids too get discouraged by lack of progress. Contrary to popular believe, at least the more clever part of them wants activities to make sense, not to pretend they are just playing. Kids too can get discouraged by lack of explanations or by a game with unfair rules, which I think matching pictures with sentences very often is.

There is surely enough to choose from, when it comes to English, German, Spanish, French, and perhaps a few others too that I don't know much about.
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Re: Rosetta stone

Postby Cainntear » Wed Mar 22, 2017 8:34 pm

[quote="polyglotponderings"]What do you all think about using Rosetta Stone for children, specifically elementary age?[/quote]

They might be happy using it, but they're unlikely to learn from it, as there really is very little to force you to attend to meaning, even unconsciously.
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Re: Rosetta stone

Postby Random Review » Fri Mar 24, 2017 2:11 pm

Cavesa wrote:
polyglotponderings wrote:I don't know of any other program that is geared towards children,


There are plenty of resources for children, it is a growing market, since more and more parents are opting for langauge classes from early age. Sure, the courses vary in quality, and my best one was quite a traditional French course for elementary schools, which gave us all a solid base, considering our age. Many courses these days share the same mistakes the courses for adults have. The courses for adults tend to be too dumbed down for adults, and the courses for kids tend to be too dumbed down for the kids of the intended target age. Don't underestimate the very young people.

And don't forget that kids too get discouraged by lack of progress. Contrary to popular believe, at least the more clever part of them wants activities to make sense, not to pretend they are just playing. Kids too can get discouraged by lack of explanations or by a game with unfair rules, which I think matching pictures with sentences very often is.

There is surely enough to choose from, when it comes to English, German, Spanish, French, and perhaps a few others too that I don't know much about.


This is soooo true!

I've only been teaching kids for 3 months, but I've already seen this for myself. For example your point about unfair rules: they know exactly when an activity isn't fair and they care passionately about it. So your lesson plan contains a language race for 2 teams of 8 and one kid doesn't show up to class? No problem, one team of 8 and one team of 7 and sorted, right? Er, wrong. As adults, we tend to think, "What does it matter? It's just a dumb game. The only important thing is that they practise the language." This is absolutely not how kids see it.
However, just as you say, they also care that it be meaningful. Thinking of hooking some boring-ass practise to a fun game in an arbitrary fashion on the assumption that they'll never notice, so that they can learn and have fun? Good luck with that. :lol:

Conversely the simplest things delight them. You'd have to have a heart of stone for it not to melt watching 4 and 5-year-olds racing to whack letters with flyswats as the teacher calls out the corresponding sounds. I had to teach the "s" vs "sh" sounds last week. We played a game with a couple of balls, nothing special, but the amazing thing was what they did afterwards as we were putting the chairs back: the whole class spontaneously started to chant these sounds in turn and the energy was absolutely incredible. I have taught the same sound distinction to adults in Spain and never witnessed anything like that (in fact where adults are concerned, I've only ever witnessed that kind of energy at football matches).

I think the whole teaching profession still has so far to go. We're still where Physics was with Aristotle. I read quite a lot, but I have never read anything that explains to me why the youngest kids I teach cannot pronounce their own (English) names correctly and yet most of them can say the word "phonics" in a near-perfect American accent merely because all our pronunciation videos start by saying that word and somehow that fascinates them. There is a wonderful (if fleeting) happiness in playing a video, knowing full well what is going to happen and watching your class of 4 and 5-year olds spontaneously beam with joy and cry out "phonics" as soon as they see the logo (before the audio).
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Cavesa
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Re: Rosetta stone

Postby Cavesa » Fri Mar 24, 2017 3:42 pm

Random Review wrote:a wonderful post, read above


Thank for giving me hope! There are teachers who actually realize the differences between children and adults, instead of just treating kids like very stupid adults. It is awesome some teachers realize it. I had a number of teachers as a kid and I see the same stuff now with some of my siblings. The good teachers are rarer, but they know exactly how to use competitions and other fun elements in class. The rest usually fails and blaims the children.

An example:I've seen a teacher, who spend half the classtime (really, not exagerating, I was looking at the clock) asking the children "how many rooms does your house have?". She was one of those I've recently mentioned in another thread, the native "teachers" who just want the lifestyle and to change their life as fast as possible with as little investment as possible. The kids were so bored. Some started shouting "boring" in class and I totally agreed. She was silencing the more active kids, which is absolutely wrong to do in such a manner (I hate the system that punishes the faster learners), while not encouraging the more shy kids at all. She organized a "contest", but she didn't finish the idea, of course the kids didn' stick to it, when even the teacher wasn' motivated to go through it all. The only point of giving points to groups was being able to take them away for speaking (yes, the more advanced kids were a bit "disturbing" the class, but only in English and only because the teacher gave them nothing to do).

Or the courseboks for kids. My sister was frustrated by lack of progress at the age of 8 or 9 years. THe book was extremely slow and it kept avoiding any explanations so much that I didn't know what to practice with her. Kids at that age are fascinated by the world. By everything about animals, planets, how are things made, cars, dinosaurs, and anything. The book (published by a well known publisher in the UK) sticked to teaching them items in the classroom and other boring items of daily life only. And without giving them any grammatical means to actually talk, they were supposed to memorise phrases.

Really, kids are not adults, they have different needs (ok, except for some. My favourite method was learning from a book. :-D But I loved competing too.). But thinking that a bad resource for adults would be good enough for kids, that is not a good idea.
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