Rosetta Stone dot com

[Rankin, Robert L]

Thanks much, Linda!!  This is very much what I suspected.  I just wanted
to double-check.

Best,

Bob

-----Original Message-----
From: lcumberl at indiana.edu [mailto:lcumberl at indiana.edu]
Sent: Tuesday, March 30, 2004 3:58 PM
To: siouan at lists.colorado.edu
Subject: RE: Rosetta Stone dot com


Bob,

A few years back when I was at the AAA conference in Toronto doing a
poster session on our Institute's software, there was a Rosetta Stone
exhibit at the same time and I had a chance to go through their
demonstration.  My impression was that, as far as indigenous langauges
go, - and I emphasize that this is not current information -- they were
largely style over substance. Their program was a template that they
used for any and all languages, very colorful, lots of nice photos, and
two voice print bars across the top of the screen that showed the native
speaker's wave form and then yours, so you could compare your effort to
the native speaker's.  Watching other people play around with the
program, I observed that virtually no one knew what to do with the wave
forms (surprise, surprise!).  The capacity for vocabulary is very
limited, and as far as I could see, there was no grammar at all.  Later,
at a Stabilizing Indigenous Languages conference, I spoke with some
members of a Seminole band from Florida who had used them and were
unhappy with the results.  And, as you observe, the expense.  Rosetta
Stone was not a turnkey operation, it turns out.  In addition to
providing the speakers, the tribe had to provide a suitable recording
environment, some of the recording equipment, and a few other things
that I can't recall now, all at their own (additional) expense.

I should point out that my reservations about Rosetta Stone have nothing
to do with the fact that we do software development here -- ours are not
commercial products and we are not in competition with Rosetta Stone.
It just seemed to me that the product didn't have much depth and cost an
awful lot of money for what it was.

Linda


Quoting "Rankin, Robert L" <rankin at ku.edu>:

> Does any of you know anything about the company that uses the name
> RosettaStone.com?  There is some interest among some members of the
> tribal government in Kaw City, OK in contracting with this commercial
> language teaching outfit for putting together Kaw Language
> internet-accessible courses.  I know nothing about them, but I have
> trouble seeing just what they would do for the rather large fees they
> ask.  If any of you has had experience with this company or knows
> anyone who has, I'd like to hear about it.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Bob
>
>
>