Rosetta Stone Polish Level 1-3 (my personal experience)

Hi everybody,

I am going to use this thread to document my experience with Rosetta Stone
and learning the Polish Language.

A little background on myself, im nearly 30 and meet my Polish girlfriend
4 and half years ago. I have visited Poland every year since then and in the
summer spent 2 to 3 months in Poland with her mum, dad and her.

I only speak English not other languages, i speak very few words of Polish.
The main issue i have is getting over that block, the nerves of speaking out loud.

So i ordered a (legal) version of Rosetta Stone levels 1 to 3 it should be here by
the end of the week, i plan to document here for others what i am learning and
any difficulties i may have or issues i might encounter.

Of course i want to talk quickly about the upsides, i have my polish girlfriend and her
family that i can communicate with, so this will help me with my learning.

Please leave any messages, advice or comments.

Thanks

Wireless

Best of luck. I don't have any advise as I haven't been in this situation.


Does this mean that you normally spoke English with her family before this? Will it be hard to stop them from reverting to English if you cannot understand each other?

Thanks.

Hi CatSoldier,

Thanks for the response.

To answer your question, no her parents do not speak any English at all.
My Girlfriend would normally translate for us if needed.

Thats one of the reasons why i want to learn, so i can speak with her dad
and be able to goto the shops and look around with out need her to follow
and translate for me.

Thanks

Will you be addressing him as Pan or ty?

I'm learning Polish via Rosetta Stone as well. What I like about it is the ability to slow down the pronunciation and see how the phonics should be compared to what you are saying. I'm have to learn Polish as soon as possible so I can communicate with the guys I'm working with. I've been hired by a Polish skatepark company to train them on building concrete parks. Some of them speak and understand English but the majority of them do not. So needless to say I've been working hard to learn construction terms and phrases. I did find work tutoring English, the bulk of the work will start in Sept.

I was pretty timid speaking Polish as well. I did notice that even though they know you speak English they do appreciate the effort in learning their language. Baby steps is the best way to get over the fear. At the gym I go to I try to say 1 new phrase a day. Usually 4 word sentences are all I'm capable of right now. I haven't really used too much from Rosetta Stone yet but it does help with the pronunciation. I'm still on level1 part 3. Much of it so far is what a 3 or 4 year old would be saying.

i address them as tata and mama

Hi Harryashi,

Thanks for the response and the support.

Its great to hear from someone else that is using the same software as I will be.
How long have you been using the software to get to the level you are?

I think your right about baby steps with speaking out loud to others.

please come back and see my updates when i start, which a little update
got an email from UPS should be here Thursday evening. So i hope to start
on it on the weekend.

Thanks again

Wireless

UPDATE:

Ok they delivered on time.
The Boxing looks very nice.

You dont get very much in the box, holders for the cd's
and audio cd's
a starters guide and headphones.

I would of expected a printed copy of whats in each level and module
or something along those lines.

Right now i feel like its a very expensive product, but i think that will change once
i start to learn to speak Polish then i think it will be worth every penny spent.

Tomorrow i plan to install the product and start level 1 and do an hours studying.
at the end of this i will post an update.

any comments or questions please ask.

Wireless

IMHO, the Rosetta Stone courses are (if you really want to gain fluency in a foreign language) an extremely overpriced (if you don't download them for free off Piratebay) waste of time, heavily marketed (mainly to monolingual Americans) as the greatest ever language learning method, "using the latest technology simulating...", blah blah. As if all you had to do was put the CDs into your computer, sit through the hours and hours of repetitive lessons, and by the end be completely fluent in the language.

Having tested a few of these courses in different languages, IMHO you could probably learn more by yourself in a couple of months with a standard "teach yourself X language"-type textbook with audio, than you could by completing all three levels of the Rosetta Stone courses (= perhaps about a zillion hours of mind-numbing repetition).

The simple fact is that you can't learn a foreign language as an adult in the same way you learnt your native language as a child, which seems to be what these courses are based on. But, shock horror, the advantage of already having the command of language is, for example, you don't have to spend years and years of repetition and correction to be able to decline a word of a certain gender and number in a certain grammatical case. You can (OMG) just look up the pattern in a book and memorise it! (plus the countless exceptions if we're talking about Polish :D). You really don't need to spend hours and hours doing tedious exercises whose goal is that you'll eventually "catch on" to the way a word is declined through constant repitition of examples with images (which is probably how you'd teach a retarded monkey).

Seriously, a basic textbook (preferably with audio) and -I think this is the word lots of people want to avoid- some EFFORT (i.e. not just clicking a mouse button) is all you need to learn the basics of a language. Once you've done that (which might take several months) you can continue learning simply through reading, listening and (obviously if you have the opportunity) communicating with native speakers.

Okay, sorry for my rant, but I truly detest these courses. Don't be fooled by all those "five stars" on Amazon!

For learning for Polish from scratch, here are the titles of a few books/courses I would recommend (most of which you can find quite easily on the internet, if you know what I mean ;)):

Basic Polish & Intermediate Polish
Polish in 4 weeks
Colloquial Polish
Teach Yourself Polish
First Year Polish

Good luck.

I understand your point IDK. He is testing this software and if it as bad as you say I am sure that he will agree with you.

He is already agreeing with you a little.


Even if it doesn't work out perfectly he will still have learnt something and hopefully will then try something else and tell us how that is going.

Best of luck again from me too.

Hi,

Just a quick response to the comments posted.

Thank you for your detailed rant about how bad the product is,

I just want to point out from what i have seen so far in Rosetta Stone, its
not just about clicking, i refer to " (i.e. not just clicking a mouse button) ".
You taught how to type Polish, learn Grammar and participate in online
group practicals to help you learn to communicate with others.

im kind of guessing you must of downloaded an old version of the software.
and because it could be pirated you werent able to use all the online
features.

I do agree this software alone will not make me fluent in Polish, but its
is a very good method to learn, a book and a crappy audio disc will not
teach you pronunciation as well as this software. I have tried 1 or 2 of these
books.

I think there are many ways in which this software could be useful, first is if you
dedicate time to learn it and if you are the type of person that can learn from this software.

I just want to make clear, that this thread is not about bashing or ranting on about how bad
Rosetta Stone software is, its about my journey in learning Polish using the software.
So please keep your comments to Learning Polish and how it can be difficult or how you maybe
able to provide assistance.

Again Thank you for your comments
Wireless

Good Luck Wireless! I admire you tenacity. Do diabła (your first PF homework assignment - look it up ;) with the nay-sayers! I'm eager to follow your progress.

Would you tell us more about these online group practicals please?
How does it work?
Do you speak with native Polish speakers or fellow learners?
Is it one to one?
Is there someone supervising the conversations?
Is the online stuff similiar to livemocha or different?
livemocha.com


How does it do this?
Does it do somekind of an sound wave analysis of what you say or voice recogniton?

I don't have any interest in bashing Rosetta Stone, I would buy it if I thought that it was worth it, I am very interested to see how it goes for you as speaking is one of my big weaknesses.

Thanks.

How is it going this weekend with Rosetta Stone?

Wireless how is it going this weekend with Rosetta Stone?

Don't let people's comments put you off finishing what you started, every forum or comment section on the internet has this imho.

Hi there,

Does anyone have a copy of Rosetta stone polish (any version / level) that they no longer need?
I will be happy to pay for it as long as its sold at a good price.
I would love to use the software but I have been put off by the high cost of the software online.

Please get in touch on 07792035476 if you have one that you are prepared to sell.

Thanks,
Craig

hi
bought my Rosetta Stone Polish going well but hard work.. my first live session tonight

[Moved from]: Bought rosetta stone - anyone else have experiences with R.S?

...As I want to get the basics of polish before deciding if I have the brain power to pick it up with a real tutor. anyone else have experiences with R.S?

By the way, can someone help me translate this phrase?

"I love Wroclaw. I will definitely be back within a year"

thanks x

Please use the 'Fee Translation' forum for translation requests, thanks.

Kocham Wrocław. Zdecydowanie wrócę tu/tam (tu is here/tam is there) za rok.

I too have Rosetta Stone and like it. I also write a load of words and comon phrases into a text book and try to learn a few of words per day, doesn't sound much but if you learn even three new words per day that's 21 per week that's 1092 words per year. Of course that is as well as doing the course. I also use Bussu.com as an application on my phone,. it doesn't need to be connected to the internet so if you don't have internet on your phone you can use it when out and about.

It will take years for you to communicate in Polish that is unless you do nothing else but learn it. It's hard and a lot of the words seem impossible to pronounce at the begining but you'll get there eventually. You will get there eventually, I've been here a little over two years, I can communicate and understand a load more than I can speak. Sometimes I think it's a good thing too, especially when you live in a village and all the natives want to do is talk about what the other villager did.. did you hear this did you hear that, blah blah blah.

Good luck :-)

I'm mohamed looking to learn polish language
If anyone if u have the copy of rosseta and don't need anymore please you can help me to get some basic atleast you can contact me by my email:dimcad1999@gmail

Thank you everyone for the advice