Live Mocha - The poor man's Rosetta Stone

I'm sure you've probably already heard of Rosetta Stone, and wondered if it's worth the money. Short answer: no. Not just because I think the approach is flawed, but because you can get a very similar product for FREE in the guise of Livemocha.

It takes the same immersion approach as Rosetta Stone, giving you zero English and teaching you through pictures. I disagree with the general approach, as it's very difficult to express certain things only in pictures - is it teaching you the verb form for negation or past tense? The crux of the problem is that the system is made to work with any native language (hence the pictures), and to any language. They don't take into account idiosyncrasies of your own language that may have a bearing on the one your learning, and vice versa. Prime example being the lesson on describing what people are wearing. Japanese has multiple verbs for 'to wear' (above the waist, below the waist, hats, glasses, gloves, accessories). That's just unnecessary confusion introduced early on in a language that is commonly labelled as difficult. Yet, it's something simple in a lot of European languages.

That said, I find Livemocha actually does better than Rosetta Stone in some respects. All the lessons are labelled clearly, so I know that they're introducing negatives, prepositions etc. There's less concern with instant gratification so the quizzes are a little more of a challenge. Users can also submit tips at each stage of the lesson, which are rated up/down based on accuracy and appropriateness. For example the first tip in the negatives lesson explains that 'ja arimasen' is actually a spoken contraction (like I am becomes I'm) of 'dewa arimasen' which soon erases any confusion at the discrepancy between the audio and the romaji (I do envy the option for Kana and Furigana in Rosetta, even though it helps to see the written pronunciation, you do not want to get used to Romaji). At the end of each lesson you are also given a written and spoken test, which you can submit for native speakers to assess and correct. Rosetta does offer something similar with their TOTALe package, but $999 vs free, hmmmm tough choice isn't it?

Certainly Livemocha has it's faults, but it is quite exceptional for a free product. The community is quite friendly and makes up for some of those faults with their helpful advice. It's not going to get you to fluency, but nor is Rosetta Stone. It's definitely worth checking out if you're not quite sure where to start and want to get a feel for the language.