Rosetta stone

     I have never used Rosetta stone before, it is indeed very famous all around the world, but I found it was so expensive.

   One of the advantages of the Rosetta stone is its interactiveness, which makes it very interesting for some learners who like to learn this way. Almost all the teachings are carried out on an interactive interface on which we are supposed to do as the machine said. That created a kind of artificial environment that we are forced to understand and respond to second language. Moreover, the overall design is very beautiful and it would help to promote students intrinsic motivation in learning the second language. The final advantage is its systematic, we can almost find all levels of second language teaching and learning materials fit to all levels of students.

   The first disadvantage of the system is that we can not find instruction in the beginning level teaching and learning materials, students have to infer all the meaning by themselves without any help from instruction, which I think is not appropriate. Besides, the languages they use are not authentic and pretty decontextualized, that would remove students from the opportunity to be exposed to authentic language. Moreover, audio-lingual repetition teaching method does not focus on communication ability, that kind of approach has been considered to be outdated by teaching practice and many educationists.