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Last updated:
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Launched in 1992, Rosetta Stone has over two decades of experience in teaching students a new language. The result is one of the most thorough and effective language learning apps in the industry. The software covers over 20 languages, tackling reading, writing, listening, and speaking with an immersive approach. It’s so intuitive that we didn’t even notice we were learning new vocabulary.
While courses are on-demand, Rosetta Stone does provide 6-week personalized study plans that consider students’ goals. In addition to the usual classes and exercises, the language learning platform also offers live sessions with native speakers and expert tutors, interactive stories, an audio companion, and much more. Prices start at $13.99 per month, and there’s a 30-day money-back guarantee to try out Rosetta Stone risk free.
Rosetta Stone offers more than 20 different language courses, including the most popular ones, such as English, Spanish, French, German, Japanese, Italian, Chinese (Mandarin), and Portuguese (Brazilian). The software also covers some niche languages, such as Farsi, Hebrew, and Tagalog.
It’s important to mention that the language learning app also addresses different dialects, having dedicated courses for American English, British English, Spanish from Latin America, and Spanish from Spain.
Through in-depth research, Rosetta Stone came up with the best way for students to learn new vocabulary in a hassle-free and uncomplicated way. Instead of getting explanations in your own language, Rosetta Stone provides an immersion experience where everything is in the language you’re studying.
With this immersive approach, it’s easier to learn the language and acquire new vocabulary by association, speeding up memorization. The all-around language learning software covers pronunciation, vocabulary, grammar, reading, writing, listening, and speaking exercises.
Repetition is key with Rosetta Stone. While it felt a bit tedious after a while, this repetition was what led us to progress and boosted our confidence through the Japanese course. All programs follow roughly the same routine and present the same images, which, unfortunately, means they lack cultural context.
Rosetta Stone is more than a conventional language course, providing an extended array of learning tools. Its audio companion lets you download all exercises in MP3 – perfect for listening offline during a commute, cleaning, or exercising. It also provides further opportunities to practice through its alphabet pronunciation tool.
Meanwhile, Rosetta Stone’s ‘Stories’ section includes small texts read by native speakers that can be listened to while reading to help build the connection between the written and spoken word. Additionally, the ability to record ourselves reading aloud was valuable to get some objectivity on our pronunciation and accent.
Rosetta Stone also provides on-demand videos with interesting cultural topics that you can watch. However, the course we tested – Japanese – only had four 1-minute videos, which is hardly enough
Sometimes, you need a teacher to help you. With Rosetta Stone, it’s possible to schedule 25-minute tutoring sessions. These live classes are always in sync with what you’re learning, meaning that the teaching will always be at just the right level.
All teachers are native speakers to ensure the full immersion in the language continues. The classes can be solo or in a group, and you don’t need to show your face. Although the teachers use their webcams, students are only required to share their audio – nothing more. It’s important to mention that live tutoring is paid separately, with lessons costing between $14 and $19. The being said, the first class is on the house, so you can get a feeling if this added perk is worth your hard-earned money.
Joining a 25-minute live stream is also possible. Called live sessions by the company, these sessions are the perfect refreshers once you have already studied the topic. Keep in mind that both the live streams and tutoring sessions are only available in some languages, so we recommend checking the company’s support channel to see if the language you want to learn is on the list.
Rosetta Stone starts by building a 6-week tailored learning plan. The first thing students do is answer a small questionnaire. Depending on the answers, the language learning app creates a personalized plan considering your learning goals and proficiency level (beginner, intermediate, or proficient).
This tailored plan is then added to your ‘Home’ section, where you can clearly see an overview of what is to come. However, this plan is not mandatory, as Rosetta Stone, at its core, offers on-demand language learning courses. So you can learn the 12 learning units of the program at your own pace. Each has its own theme, like shopping and travel, and is divided into four different sections with lessons averaging 15 minutes.
Rosetta Stone uses deduction to teach by repeatedly showing you the same labeled picture. After a while, the app starts building phrases with these words, leaving you to deduce the meaning of the words you haven’t learned yet.
For example, right at the start, you learn to say ‘man’. You then are shown sentences like ‘the man is cooking’, and since you already know ‘man’, you’re able to identify ‘cooking’ in the sentence. Exercises get increasingly complicated, and by the end, you can confidently apply what you’ve learned.
It’s possible to access Rosetta Stone through its browser version or mobile app for Android and iOS. While they are interchangeable, we didn’t find the switching very practical, as we had to sign out of one device to log into another.
Its browser version occasionally takes a while to load when navigating its features, but overall, both versions are user-friendly and attractive, with an intuitive interface. It’s easy to scroll through the various exercises and understand what to do in each one.
If you plan on using a laptop, ensure you have a good microphone for the speaking lessons. Rosetta Stone struggled to correctly recognize our pronunciation on the computer, which wasn’t the case when we tested the mobile app.
Compared to other language learning software, Rosetta Stone is a bit expensive. The company provides three billing cycles: every three months, annually, and a lifetime subscription. In other words, you might reach your goals before the plan ends, which is not ideal.
With our affiliate discount, prices start at $10.50 per month on an annual plan. Although the 3-month doesn’t require such a big commitment, it costs $15.99 per month ($47.97 in total). It’s also possible to get unlimited access to all languages with a lifetime subscription. Its regular price is $399, but you can get it for $199 by taking advantage of our affiliate discount.
Rosetta Stone offers a 30-day money-back guarantee, seasonal discounts, and specific deals for some languages, so always browse the website before reaching out for your credit card. Finally, businesses and schools can request a tailored pricing plan for their needs.
It’s possible to contact Rosetta Stone’s customer support team from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. (ET) on workdays via email, phone, or live chat. There’s also a handy FAQ and a support center, but the website itself doesn’t provide as much information as we wished for.
Although the chat feature only pops up on specific support pages, which isn’t practical, the reply times are surprisingly fast. Our experience with customer support couldn’t have been better. We made a mistake when choosing which course we wanted to test, and customer support promptly and effectively changed it to the correct one.
Rosetta Stone is a comprehensive language learning app. Although every individual has their ideal learning method, most will find the immersive approach effective. The service has some downsides, like the need for more cultural context and improving the process of switching between devices.
However, all of this is quickly forgotten once you go over the entertainingly broad range of activities and use the intuitive browser version and mobile app. Plus, the ability to download exercises to study while offline is convenient.
Although prices are slightly high, students who are committed for the long run should go with the annual plan or lifetime subscription to get an advantageous discount. We also recommend taking advantage of the 30-day money-back guarantee to ensure this language learning software is the right one for you and trying out tutoring by taking advantage of the first free class.
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Support is lousy.
Hello Tamela, and thank you for your comment.
We’re sorry to hear you’ve had a negative experience with Rosetta Stone’s customer service. If you haven’t received your answer from customer support, we recommend trying to find a solution in the company’s support portal, which you can access at the bottom of the company’s homepage. You can also read a few blog articles published by the company, as your answer may easily be there. We hope you’re able to fix your issue. Have a nice day!
My RS Korean version is an old one. It is a boxed set I bought years ago, so it doesn’t include the advantages of online support and live native speakers or the disadvantage of continuous billing. I was quite dissatisfied and tried to get a refund, as stated by Fairfield Language Technologies , which sold me the set. I never got a response.
So, why did I want a refund? There are a number of reasons. Despite hours a day, I wasn’t learning with the program. There were exercises that I had done so often that I got them right even though I had no idea what was being said (e.g., pictures of various shapes in different positions). This really raised the affective barrier. I asked a native speaker to look at some of the content, and she said much of it was unnatural. The recycling programming did not make sense: I would be sent back to repeat material that I knew but not some material that I didn’t. I’m sure it wasn’t arbitrary, but it sure felt like it. This was very de-incentivizing. The idea peddled by RS that this is the way we learn our first language and therefore the best way to learn another language as a speaker of at least one language (i.e., as an older child or as an adult) is doubly flawed. First, babies learn by interacting and getting feedback and correction and scaffolding (and the more of this, the better they speak their language, according to recent research). Second, in many languages, including Korea, how you should speak and what words and forms to use depend on who is speaking and/or to whom you are speaking. Rosetta Stone showed me no awareness of this. Third, as adults, we have language-learning tools not available to babies (in fact, Rosetta Stone implicitly partially acknowledges this by including reading from the start), which means that contrary to popular perceptions, adults can learn faster *in terms of contact hours* that infants. On the other hand, the neurophysiology of babies’ brains is different from ours, which gives certain advantages over our brains.
Hello Kim Dammers! Thanks for your helpful comment, and we’re sorry to hear about your experience with Rosetta Stone. Since you bought your boxed set some years ago, it’s very unlikely that you’ll get a refund today. As of now, Rosetta Stone states that it only refunds products bought directly from them. So, if you have purchased the boxed set from a retailer, there’s nothing you can do. But, if you got it from the company itself, you can always try to send them proof of your purchase and that you’ve asked for a refund within the due time and never got a response.
Indeed, one of the biggest weaknesses of Rosetta Stone is the lack of cultural context. As you said, Korea (and other Asian countries for that matter) have huge cultural and linguistic differences compared to the U.S. The only way to learn a language so different from ours is by taking a thorough course that explains everything from the beginning and includes important details, such as how to address different people. That’s why we mainly recommend Rosetta Stone to study languages similar to English, such as Spanish, Dutch, or French. Of course, each language learning teaching method works best for different people, and you should always do a test run before committing to any language learning app, including Rosetta Stone. We wish you good luck with your Korean learning journey and that the next course you take is more suited to your learning method!
I was a loyal Rosetta Stone customer for probably a decade or so, I think. I know as early as 2010. It’s late 2020 now. So if anyone was happy with the service, I was.
Here’s what changed:
1) I bought a lifetime subscription for $189.00 as the ads were showing back in 2019. They assured me when the flash stopped working in Chrome browser I still had access and I still had a lifetime subscription. I said okay. I hung up.
2) Nov 7th, 2020, I saw a charge on my card for $199 for a 24-mo subscription. I called. They denied I ever had a lifetime subscription, but said they’d be glad to sell me another. I no thanks, 2 lifetime subscriptions doesn’t really make sense. I asked to speak to a supervisor, but was told that would take “1 to 3 business days”. Seriously.
The reason I demote all other features of this review to 1 star? Well, the features aren’t accessible, even though I was told repeatedly that I had a lifetime subscription! Therefore the price, the overall experience, and customer service certainly can’t be more than 1 star after that point. After all, it’s customer service who now not only tells me I don’t have a lifetime subscription, but also blocked my access after telling me I had another subscription that was still somehow in effect (they really can’t keep up with their own lies).
CONCLUSION
Rosetta Stone used to be a good, reliable and honest company. No more. They are cancelling lifetime subscriptions and converting them back to 24-mo subscriptions by the language, when the lifetime subscription you bought made all languages free to you according to the lying promotional copy.
*** Do not buy! ***
You will be lied to. You will be charged for stuff you shouldn’t be. They will cancel your account if you say anything and you’ll lose all your progress. You’d have to be stupid to buy Rosetta Stone after reading this review. There are other, way better lifetime-subscriptions for learning languages out there that don’t shirk off the terms of their own promotions after you pay your money.
Hello Mark, we’re sorry to hear you’re having problems with Rosetta Stone. We understand why you’d be upset with the company – if they sold you a lifetime subscription over the phone, you shouldn’t have to worry about future charges.
From Rosetta Stone’s Purchase Terms & Conditions: “A Rosetta Stone “Lifetime” subscription plan is a limited offer that allows you to access the services for the Rosetta Stone Product you purchased that are available at the time of your purchase for as long as the Product and those services are available and supported”.
So, unless the language course you got stopped being supported, you should continue having access to it. The company shouldn’t be able to cancel the lifetime subscription and change it to a subscription model – that would go against their own terms.
Did you save the email with the billing information and purchase confirmation? That message would include the plan you purchased. This is proof that you got the lifetime subscription and can be used to recover your Rosetta Stone access and get a refund from your latest credit charge.
We also recommend always asking the company (Rosetta Stone and others) to send a written transcript of what’s been discussed on the phone. This way, if you face any issue like this one, you’ll have all the necessary information to make your case.