TopTenREVIEWS

By Wanda Richards

RosettaStone TOTALe, pronounced total-lee, is the part of RosettaStone that offers more than just software for learning a language. From what we can see, RosettaStone TOTALe appears to be new and maybe not so tried and true. When we visited the site, we clicked on the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) link and we found tons of grammatical and punctuation errors. This is indeed surprising for an English teaching website.

RosettaStone has a good reputation so we assume RosettaStone TOTALe will get better over time, but we weren’t at all impressed with their classes that are guided by a native speaker who is visible via webcam, because the teachers are unable to see the students they are teaching.

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Social Media:

RosettaStone TOTALe states on their website that students can interact with other students, but we were unable to find out how they are actually allowed to interact. We’re not quite sure why RosettaStone TOTALe isn’t more forthcoming with information about their program.

Quality of Instruction:

RosettaStone TOTALe states that they do have native speaking coaches, but we didn’t find any information that said anything about live tutors nor did we find any indication that there was live interaction between teacher and student. On their website there is information about an independent study that says that the RosettaStone method is very good. Their sample lessons consist of students listening to a specific word, then the students repeat that word and then they look at a picture of the item in question.

Their method appears to focus on the lower level student since their highest level only promises to get the student to be able to share ideas and opinions and to talk about everyday life. Students who are looking to perfect their English may not want to invest in RosettaStone TOTALe.

Variety of Offerings:

RosettaStone TOTALe simply doesn’t offer a wide variety of offerings. We were, however, pleased to see that they do offer speech recognition software, which we know will come in handy to many learners. But we recommend that you select an English learning option where you are interacting with a live tutor to correct your pronunciation.

Instructional Options:

We were pleased to see that RosettaStone TOTALe does offer the student a way to keep track of the language progress being made. Students, however, need more than this to become fluent in a language. We hope that RosettaStone TOTALe will add options such as Business English and TOEFL preparation to their courses. This would make the product much more appealing to those who need to learn English.

Summary:

RosettaStone TOTALe has made the foray into online learning and they have a long way to go to be able to compete with the other websites out there. They certainly must have the personnel for bettering their program and we hope they do in the future.

Until they do, take a look at our three award-winning English learning websites: English4today, English, baby! and Livemocha.