Rosetta Stone acquires the rights to endangered languages

[Wendy Smith]

This is amazing. I tried to use Rosetta Stone to get started in Russian, 
and it was hopeless. They say that their materials are based on child 
acquisition theory and research--therefore direct immersion with no 
direct instruction. As someone who has studied SLA, I found this to be 
patently ridiculous. Adult second language learners do not learn in the 
same way as first language acquirers. In addition, the core of the 
materials are made up of isolated useless sentences such as "the women 
are cooking" and "the boys are not reading." My brother-in-law, who 
works in the biotech industry (in other words, no linguistics training 
or knowledge) insisted to me that if you just do the program, you will 
learn Russian. However, a month after he returned from his trip to Saint 
Petersburg he could not remember the words for "where" or "when." It is 
virtually impossible to "acquire" (as RS states) a language in your car 
or at your computer, but there are other programs that help introduction 
to the language way better than Rosetta Stone.

On 1/20/2011 8:50 AM, Keith Johnson wrote:
> Hi Funksters,
>
> My subject heading is intentionally provocative, but this article 
> raises a couple of
> issues.  Is it a good thing for Rosetta Stone to have an endangered 
> languages
> unit?
>
> Keith Johnson
>
> http://www.adn.com/2011/01/19/1657429/alaska-natives-team-up-with-rosetta.html 
>
>
>
>