Language Learning Software Comparison: Rosetta Stone vs. Transparent Language Posted by Transparent Language on May 7, 2013 in For Businesses, For Educators, For Learners, For Libraries
It’s tough being the “other one” in the language-learning business, especially when competitors employ a heavy marketing strategy. Rosetta Stone is a household name, and those yellow boxes are everywhere. Many people feel that if they are paying hundreds of dollars for a language solution, well, they must be buying the best solution, right? Maybe, maybe not. But one thing we all know is that a heavily advertised, high priced product has to have an awful lot of marketing costs built into that price.
We don’t do heavy advertising like they do, but we do feel (not surprisingly) that Transparent Language makes the best language learning software. Ironically, it’s because we didn’t develop our programs for the consumer market. Our technology, methodology, and product lines were originally created for serious U.S. Government language schools, where failure is not an option. But don’t think that means we don’t care about individual learners! We love languages, and genuinely want YOU to succeed with your language learning. So we also develop language programs for individual learners, public libraries, schools, companies, and other organizations, which leverage the same technology and methodology as our programs for government language schools.
To illustrate the contrast between our programs and those of Rosetta Stone, we have prepared a white paper explaining the differences between Rosetta Stone and Transparent Language. It should help you better understand what we’re about, the capabilities of our programs, the instructional methods we use, and how you can succeed as a learner.
Learning about other languages and cultures is so important in today’s world. It can provide a career advantage, and open the door to countless new friendships. Not only that, but it makes your brain smarter and more agile. Even if you ARE just in it to woo an Italian supermodel, we want you to have the best possible shot at success and the best language-learning experience possible.
The bottom line is, every language learner is different, and no single product alone can satisfy every learner’s needs. You should research, experiment, and see what works best for you as an individual. We hope our comparative analysis inspires you to explore all your language-learning options.
Build vocabulary, practice pronunciation, and more with Transparent Language Online. Available anytime, anywhere, on any device.
About the Author: Transparent Language
Transparent Language is a leading provider of best-practice language learning software for consumers, government agencies, educational institutions, and businesses. We want everyone to love learning language as much as we do, so we provide a large offering of free resources and social media communities to help you do just that!
Comments:
Jon McGill:
I am a user of both Rosetta Stone and Byki, and I would say the two programs are complementary. Where Byki is weak is in phrases, pronounciation, speaking, and thinking completely in the target language without resorting to translation. Byki is strong when it comes to basic building blocks of the language, the bricks, i.e. vocabulary. While Rosetta Stone is strong in the construction, i.e. putting the bricks together to form a palace. Rosetta Stone’s weaknesses are limited levels (limited vocabulary) and not enough reviewing of vocabulary. Developing vocabulary is difficult with Rosetta Stone because the adaptive learning does not focus on vocabulary that was weak, whereas Byki emphasizing words that you had difficulty learning previously. Also Byki is much less professional looking. Not just cheap, but it has basic bugs like, when your vocabulary list grows to very large sizes, the performance of the program is very slow, whereas Rosetta Stone is generally more stable and the speech recognition is a huge benefit that Byki doesn’t have.
Transparent Language:
@Jon McGill Hi Jon,
Thanks for your feedback! We actually wouldn’t compare Rosetta Stone to Byki, the apples to apples comparison is to Transparent Language Online. If you haven’t tried TLO (which includes Byki’s features and functionality), you definitely should! Would love to hear your thoughts after doing so.
Sean Young:
I personally have used both Rosetta Stone and Transparent Language products from the mid-1990’s up to today. Although Rosetta Stone does help you learn in getting you to think in the language, it lacks in quite a lot – no grammar explanation, learning things that make no sense in the real world (how often do you need to say a boy is lying underneath a ball?), no cultural sensitivity. Rosetta Stone is also stuck in an interface hasn’t changed since 1997.
Comparing Byki alone against RS will make Byki look bad. But if you have tried the rest of TL software products, you’ll see that it’s kept up to date, the interface has changed to accommodate the user and the learning process is much better than RS. And you get grammar explanations and the student gets help in their native language.
In my personal, unbiased opinion, Rosetta Stone was a good software program to get a foundation in how a language works in 1997. But Transparent Language is more suited for today’s standards. It’s been tested by real world needs.
Robin Bremner:
OK that’s interesting. I’ve read the above article plus the comparison article with Rosetta Stone that you linked to.
I’m currently learning Turkish with Rosetta Stone. I’ve learned a lot but I must admit I’m not a fan of total immersion. I don’t like that grammar is not explained, so I also have a text book that I use. I get the principle behind using visual images to learn new words but I still write down any new words I have learned and memorize them the old fashioned way.
I currently live in Turkey so anything I don’t understand from the Rosetta Stone course I can ask. But that won’t work for most people.
Jon above mentioned speech recognition. I have found it worse than useless. For example I use the word “merhaba” (hello) several times a day. No Turk has ever not understood me, yet RS won’t recognize my pronuniation. With single words it is almost impossible for the software to accept one’s pronunciation. With longer phrases you can make several mistakes and it will take your pronunciation as correct. Obviously there is a major flaw in the software. I turned it off.
As someone else mentioned, some of the phrases are strange. I have never felt the need to say “The man is holding a rake while reading a book to his children” in English so I doubt the situation will arise in Turkish. Sure, I understand the idea is to use an example to teach the grammar but maybe there are more useful, everyday examples that could be used instead?
Anyway I’m going to take a look at your Turkish course to see if that might work better for me.