The advantage of Rosetta Stone is that it does not utilize any English. It shows you photos, describes them in your target language, and then lets you practice doing the same, eliminating the need for a translator. Speaking, writing, listening comprehension, grammar, and vocabulary are all covered in the course. There are separate lessons for each element, as well as cumulative lessons that include all of them. The length of the classes varies; some are less than five minutes long, while others might go up to 30 minutes.
We believe that among the resources described here, Rosetta Stone’s content is the most similar to what you may learn in a high school language program. Rather than the conversational phrases taught in Pimsleur, it begins by teaching you fundamental vocabulary that you’d expect children to learn (“cat,” “dog,” “tree,” etc.) and basic descriptive grammatical constructs (“the boy drinks milk,” “the woman drives a car,” etc.). It is also more concerned with hammering out precise grammatical rules. Pimsleur will tell you things like, “This sentence should theoretically have an object marker, but it’s fine if you omit it,” whereas Rosetta Stone will never tell you that.
We genuinely believe that Pimsleur and Rosetta Stone complement each other extremely well due to their very diverse approaches. However, they are the two most expensive courses here, and we understand that many people will not want to pay for both. If you have to choose between the two as your major course, we recommend Pimsleur if you’re learning for a vacation, if you want to converse with native speakers of your target language, or if you just want to see results quickly. If you want a truly complete long-term foundation or to practice reading and writing, we recommend Rosetta Stone.
