Rosetta Stone guarantee

I have read that Rosetta Stone offers a guarantee if you buy directly from them. If you do not like the program you can return it, in other words satisfaction guaranteed. I am sure there are people who never use their Rosetta Stone, and some who do not like it, and I guess a small percentage of these people return it. Good marketing.

This evening I was watching television with my wife, when I saw Michael Phelps the Olympic swimmer describing how he was using Rosetta Stone to learn Mandarin. The ad said that Rosetta Stone guarantees that it is the "fastest way to learn a language".

I am curious about several things.
1) When do they consider a language to be learned?
2) If person A learns faster on another system  than person B on Rosetta Stone, then person B can get their money back. This is the same as the satisfaction guarantee. The implication is, however, that their system is the fastest way to learn. I wonder what, if any, data they have to back this inference. I wonder if they need to have data, however arrived at, to support this boast.

I realize that they do not say that it is faster, they just guarantee that it is. Good marketing I guess.

We like to say that LingQ is simply the best way to learn languages. We believe it. We have no proof. But the word "best" is a little more general and subjective than the word fastest, which suggests that some kind of objective test or measurement has been applied.

At any rate, I am impressed at the amount of money Rosetta Stone has available to spend on advertizing. I wonder if Michael Phelps will "learn" Mandarin faster on Rosetta Stone, than if he tried another method, or if he will learn it at all. It really does not matter. I am happy to see language learning promoted and big name stars involved in promoting language learning.

In fact I would love to see those those LPGA Korean golfers, who need to improve their English, try LingQ. Or maybe Barack Obama, who has spoken out in favour of Americans learning more languages, can get on LingQ and learn Spanish to get more support in the Hispanic community in the US.

Meanwhile, we are happy that our users like LingQ,  here is what some of them have said.

Comments

[Nicole]

Hi Steve, Do you think that what Rosetta is doing with saying it is the "fastest way to learn a language" is also a way of encouraging students? I mean: if it is the fastest way, then there is a slower way too, should you at one point forget to use Rosetta Stone and find yourself still immersed in the language. And both ways, though one slower than the other, lead to learning the language (however that may be defined by Rosetta)?

To me it seems like this marketing technique is telling people they can do it, thus making them more confident to discover the language even on their own.

Oh, and would you not like to, at some point in time, quantify how LingQ is simply the best way to learn languages? You do have students of linguistics amongst your members, you know.. and some of them haven't chosen a subject to write a thesis on yet ;)

[Steve Kaufmann]

I agree that these Rosetta Stone ads are very positive for language learning in general.

I would love to have some research done on how people can learn language in an international web based learning community like LingQ (sort of like Ivan Illitch's convivium concept that I referred to in my book almost 6 years ago.)

Furthermore LingQ measures learners' activities. It would be interesting to correlate the activity scores at LingQ with improvements on some third party test like TOEIC. If a linguistics student is prepared to study this we would provide as much help as possible.

[nobuo]

Hi Steve,
My friend tell me the interisting web site (in Japanese) recently. Go to http://english.chance.com/ and have a look. The site promote the uniqe prmotion and experiment. They chose sevel young girls who are absolute beginners of English speaking. Those girls are non famous entertainers and they want to be more famous as well as they want to be a good English speakers.

Each girl choose the different methods of English speaking learning. One chose a correspondance course provided by company ALC, one chose nintendo DS and English learning software, one chose online popular site named iKnow!, one chose another learning materials provided by company ALC, one chose one-on-one lesson with biligual tutor, one chose popular Filipino online English lesson with skype, and the last girl chose NHK radio English program.

Sevel girls are challengers. We guess who will be the most improved challenger with English speaking, not a paper test. Challengers have to upload thier videos on their video blogs every day and they can speak only English on their videos. It must be tough for the beginers. Every month the promoter check their English speaking and three months later they decide who is the winner.

I think this is the big promotion for those girls and the companies which provided the materials or web site.
I'm sure those companies are sponsors in this online events. If I can find those event online or TV, I'll let you know. The LingQ method will be another choice.

Nobuo

[Fredrik]

I have been learning Mandarin for the last two years and I have tried several methods of learning including RS. I wouldnt recommend RS to anybody, it just doesnt work. Sure you will pick up some words and phrases but that it. I agree that the ads are good for promoting language learning in general but Im afraid a lot of people will get dissapointed and blame themselves (instead of RS)when they realize this method doesnt work.

However, my parents enjoy using RS for English. My parents are Swedish and learned English in school for many years ago. Now they are using RS for refreshing and maintaining their English level. What they like most is the voice recording and that they get direct feedback about their pronunciation. Its very good for them but they dont learn much new things, just solidifying what they learned many years ago.

[Fredrik]

Phelps using RS to learn Mandarin, I found this on Youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_S2inzb7R4

[Steve Kaufmann]

Nobuo,

I wonder how we can get LingQ included in the programs they try?

[Steve Kaufmann]

Interesting video Frederik. Thanks. I wonder how motivated Phelps is. I now that when I started Russian I tried a number of starter books. (This was just before we had Russian on LingQ. I bought Random Houses' Living Language, Teach Yourself and Colloquial's beginner courses. A I have said before Teach Yourself and Colloquial are both acceptable starter courses since they focus on providing short meaningful dialogues, that I could listen to over and over.

Living Language was useless because it only offered phrases, isolated phrases. These are hard to listen to over and over, and hard to remember since there is no context, no episode, noting to make them "stick".

This is what I see in this video of Rosetta Stone. Pictures are a distraction to me, and isolated phrases, with no context, are hard to learn. The pronunciation feedback is gimmicky to me. One should not even attempt the pronunciation until a lot of input, a lot of listening, when the brain is more used to the new language and its sounds.

At least that is my experience. Anyway I hope a lot of people buy Rosetta Stone and then discover LingQ.

[nobuo]

Steve,
Chance It! Inc. is the name of the company which promote this online event. You can see the press release of this event.
http://info.chance.com/company/pressrelease/press.php?num=44
You can find their e-mail address on this page.
Hope this helps.

[Steve]

Oh man.. I hate Rosetta Stone stuff.. it's over hyped crap in my opinion. The one I tried, I hated it. You seem to have to be a brain surgeon just to get the crappy software to run, then their method is less than desirable.

[Ethan Poole]

Rosetta Stone is largely overhyped. It is a nice way to jump into a language without having to do much planning. You get a nice sense of the basic grammar and a small vocabulary, but there is no way you can "learn" a language with Rosetta Stone. The listening stuff isn't too bad, but again everything is very basic. I used it to start learning Swedish, but it was just a nice "step 1" in the long process.

[Steve Kaufmann]

Ethan,

How much did it cost? What is the appeal of Rosetta Stone over the more basic started programs like Teach Yourself of Colloquial or Pimsleur?

[Chris]

Rosetta Stone doesn't interest me in the least, though it could be very useful for introducing children to a new language. For serious language enthusiasts, it seems to me to be little more than a very attractive, brightly-coloured gimmick.

[Drake]

RS was helpful for me in kick starting my study of Mandarin. I have studied many other language prior to Mandarin but found it difficult to jump into Mandarin without any structure. I do agree with most of the feedback regarding RS however think that it is a good way to break down the fear barrier when it comes to languages that do not use romanized letters. It is also a good way to get past the tones and just concentrate on how to say what when. I have found that since I have progressed I have had to revert to other methods like LinQ to further my studies. I would like to know how other people have jumped into Mandarin and how they have been successful in learning it?

[LFJ]

i started mandarin years ago with the colloquial chinese book. i learned everything in that book and then didnt ever touch another book like it. i picked up a grammar book and intermediate chinese book later on, which helped me with only a few points, and was mainly just an example of sentences. i got a vocabulary book which was just a list of categorized words. i probably learned a few...

i was very on and off about my studying and didnt really progress very fast. then i just started listening a lot, to anything authentic. again not very seriously, but before i knew it i was able to understand a lot. i checked out pimsleur but was already beyond the 3 volumes to it, without doing any real studying.

now all i ever do is listen or read. thats it. i would say nothing i studied that was aimed for learners really helped me. years after studying the colloquial chinese book and learning everything in it, i still couldnt practically communicate with natives on any subject like i can now. i never tried rosetta stone. it was too expensive and seemed too full of attractive colors and sounds to actually effectively teach me the language.

the thing that really pushed my mandarin level into where i could actually communicate was listening and reading.. all the time. slowly i increased my vocabulary. didnt care about grammar. then as if suddenly i started to understand authentic material.

i dont buy into any of those learner programs anymore. they all teach the same thing that doesnt get you very far. you may learn a few things but you cant communicate very effectively after studying them.

nothing beats simply listening and reading authentic material. get to it as soon as possible!

[Shannon]

Personally, I really like lingQ. I think you've done an excellent job creating a site that really suits my language learning needs.

[Katie]

I've used RS in the past, and for a short period of time, I was convinced it worked. But now I think it's very silly.

I was actually filmed for an RS commercial. Thankfully, the footage was left on the cutting room floor. They wanted to film my boyfriend and me as an example of how RS brought two people together, which was a complete lie. My boyfriend was also much more adept than I at making the sales pitch on camera, which they loved, which I thought was ironic considering he had only used the product once!

[Steve Kaufmann]

Katie,

Once we have our community fully developed I am sure that LingQ will bring more and more people together around their common interest in languages and communicating.