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Review for Rosetta Stone

I told you I wasn’t gone for good! Today I’m going to be mostly bashing Rosetta Stone’s language learning software. This review goes for Rosetta Stone whether you’re learning Japanese or any other language that this software purports to teach. It purports to teach because Rosetta Stone is particularly bad at teaching anything, except how to look at pictures and repeat words. It’s aimed mostly for travelers, but doesn’t really get you conversing, and it’s expensive to boot. Really, there’s only a couple things it does well, but this isn’t enough to make up for all the failing this software does. If anyone from Rosetta Stone actually reads this, please use the criticism to improve your software! You probably already know that Rosetta Stone teaches you language easily, right? I mean, that’s what the advertisements always tell us! What Rosetta Stone tells us and what it actually does are like night and day, but if you really don’t know much about Rosetta Stone, here’s what allegedl...

Review for LingQ - Redone!

I really wanted to do a review for LingQ , and I wound up doing a long and crazy post about things that didn't have much to do with LingQ. As such, I am redoing this post in hopes of better clarifying what LingQ is and how well it works. For starters, anyone even remotely familiar with Steve Kauffman will know that he's a huge supporter of what is normally called the input method. That basically means that you learn a language simply through exposure to it. No grammar drills, just listening, reading, and anything else you can think of that will expose you to the language. As such, that is exactly what LingQ strives to do. The most frustrating thing about learning an Asian language through the input method, in my opinion, is that if you're reading a book or a non-editable pdf, if you come across a kanji you're not sure how to read, you can't just type it into a dictionary. That frustrates me a lot! That's why LingQ is so good about that. You just hover your mou...

Review for Gakuu!

When I reviewed TextFugu for a second time , I mentioned Gakuu and how TextFugu members could get 80% off. Well, I decided to give it a go and see what to make of it. What I discovered is a goldmine for sentence mining, and a great way to understand the way the Japanese talk, especially when things aren't nice and clear like they are in textbooks. My first impression was that it was TextFugu for intermediate and advanced students, and what I found was something different, and almost better. It won't overshadow TextFugu, which will continue to grow into its own advanced material, but is excellent as a suppliment for a textbook, or an amazing find if you're an input person. Output people, I'm afraid this might not be your cup of tea. Apparently the Gakuranman, as he studied Japanese through textbooks, discovered that they just weren't doing it for him the way they were when he was a beginner. Basically, they didn't seem to be teaching "real world" Japan...

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