An Easy Way to Learn a Language at Home

Learning a foreign language is so beneficial for our kids!  It helps them to develop better problem solving skills, better multi-tasking abilities, more creativity, and an enhanced memory.  Not only that, but having two years of a foreign language is at least recommended (if not required) for all high school aged students in the United States.

There are lots of ways for our kids to learn a foreign language.  Some of these methods are much better than others!

Just a few weeks ago, my 15-year-old son went on a mission’s trip to Brazil with a group of teens and adults from our church.  We knew he was going to be going on this trip way back last fall and I began trying to help him prepare for it by learning some Brazillian Portuguese with his schooling last year.

He used a free program called DuoLingo that I had heard lots of good things about.  But after about 4 months of both of my sons using that program, they both told me that they couldn’t really understand what the computer voice was trying to say and they weren’t really learning anything.  That was a huge disappointment to me because we had wasted so much time and now he wouldn’t have anywhere near as long to prepare for his trip.  I guess you get what you pay for!

A few months before my son left for his trip, we decided to give Rosetta Stone Language Learning for Homeschool a try instead.

I was given this product for free and will be compensated for my time, but all of my opinions are honest and I was not required to write a positive review.

From the very first lesson, my son has absolutely loved Rosetta Stone.  Because he would have to be speaking in a microphone, he wanted to be in our office alone to do his lessons.  But as soon as he opened the door, he came out of the room with a huge smile on his face and started telling me about all of the words that he had learned that day.  Then, he asked me if he could please do these lessons every day until he left for his trip so that he could learn as much as possible.

And then, my husband came home from work and he started running through everything he had learned with him… and again with a smile on his face.  And throughout the next several days, he told me over and over how much fun it was.

Let me just say that this son doesn’t usually tell me how much fun it is to do his lessons…

How Rosetta Stone Works

Rosetta Stone is an immersion-type program where the students are only spoken to in the new language that they are learning.  Some of the things we really like about it are that it is repetitive enough for the students to slowly learn more and more words.  And they have various people speak the language so that when they are actually put into a situation where native speakers are talking, they won’t be completely lost.

For us, Rosetta Stone has really filled a need that I was having a hard time finding a solution for with other products.  I don’t know how to speak a foreign language other than the little bit of French I remember from when I took it back in high school.  So I’m highly reliant on someone else to teach this subject to my boys.  Fortunately, we’ve finally found something that seems to be working well for my older son.  And I’m looking forward to trying it out with my younger son this fall as well.

The Downside

There was one small aspect of the program that was frustrating.  I have to say that installation was a bear.  My best advice is to be sure to follow the instructions included in your package.  Installation isn’t necessarily straightforward.

First, you install the Rosetta Stone engine.  Then you update it to the latest version.  Then you install your specific language, which for us was Brazillian Portuguese.  Then you update that to the latest version.  Then, enter your UNIQUE KEY and then you can begin.

I didn’t completely understand what the program was trying to tell me during the installation process at first.  And I’d gotten spoiled by just sticking discs into the computer and having them install themselves.  So this one took a little bit of thinking.  Once we successfully installed it, however, the program has been running flawlessly and we haven’t had any issues with it at all.

 

Find Out More

If you’d like to try the Rosetta Stone software, you can do so by trying their FREE demo.  You can also learn more about the company and the various foreign languages they offer by signing up for their FREE newsletter. You can also follow them on Facebook.

Have you ever used Rosetta Stone?  Have you had success with your kids learning a foreign language using any other programs?  Please leave a comment below!