Rosetta Stone Portuguese 2009

TopTenREVIEWS

TopTenREVIEWS - Silver Award - Awarded for excellence in design, useability and feature set

Rosetta Stone takes a new approach to teaching Portuguese and receives our “TopTenREVIEWS Silver Award”. Instead of drilling you with translations and memorization exercises, the program immerses you into the language with picture associations, phrases and ideas.

There are 92 lessons that encompass the fundamentals of learning a language including listening comprehension, reading, writing and speech recognition. In addition, you can choose your own learning path with Rosetta Stone.

Because Rosetta Stone presents the Portuguese language in a different way than most programs, it does not include familiar tools like a dictionary or other ways to translate a word such as a word processing converter, glossary or word and root search. Instead, the program teaches the language by concepts and images rather than by translation.

Rosetta Stone Portuguese Screenshots

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Ease of Use:

We were able to install the program within three minutes. Rosetta Stone is simple enough for a computer novice to use and navigate.

Features:

Rosetta Stone has two Portuguese levels. You can choose to start with level two or you can work your way to level 2.

There are previews, exercises and tests for every lesson.

You can pick your learning path by choosing from 92 lessons; you do not have to go in order. Some of these lessons include identifying numbers, people, directions, types of clothing and telling time.

Fundamentals:

With Rosetta Stone, you can learn the fundamentals of Portuguese including comprehension, reading, writing and speech recognition. In addition, you can record yourself, play it back and then compare your pronunciation to a native speaker.

However, this software does not include vocabulary, grammar or conversation practice.

Teaching Tools:

When you buy Rosetta stone, you will also receive an audio CD and story/reference book. This software also uses over 3500 real–life images as one of the main teaching tools so you can learn Portuguese by association.

Word Tools:

We were disappointed to discove that Rosetta does not have word tools, especially a Portuguese/English dictionary.

Learning Games:

This software is not much for games, but does include flash cards. Most Language software offers at least one game to try to make learning enjoyable.

Technical Help/Support:

Rosetta Stone has a FAQ (Frequent Asked Questions) section and online help; but if you still have questions, their support team is willing to help. We made a phone call and the customer service associate was helpful and answered our questions.

Summary:

Overall, Rosetta Stone is a great Portuguese learning program that teaches by association, concept and imagery.