Rosetta Stone Polish

Rosetta stone Polish a personal experience

I think Rosetta stone is a good program for some and might even recommend it. But it did not work for me.
My experience with Rosetta stone Polish was as follows.  I bought it off their website a a few years ago.  I was really fired up about learning Polish.   In fact, I had the intention of visiting/moving to Poland so cost of was an issue.

For the first three weeks I worked really hard with Rosetta Stone. However, I became very confused. Why? When I asked my Polish friends they all said Rosetta Stone was a very ‘głupi’ (that means stupid in Polish) program.  I asked why and what was going on.

Polish cases not taught properly

They explained the program was written by English native speakers for the English language.   It gave no respect to Polish noun cases.  This is what the Polish language is all about.  Just like Russian or Ukrainian.  In the first lesson, there are three Polish cases with no explanation.  This is crazy. The result confusion.  I had to learn Polish grammar on my own and years latter Rosetta Stone made some sense, after I already learn to speak Polish.

Pictures in Rosetta Stone are unclear

Further, the pictures are unclear as to the meaning.  A lot of mental energy and pain goes into trying to figure out what the picture is about. This same energy could go into learning the word itself, rather than just what the picture is about.

Customer service turned to Stone

A few years ago I thought Rosetta Stone customer service was great. When I was purchasing the product, there was no push, the people answered all my questions honestly, they even admitted the weakness.  I was impressed and decided to try it.  When I called a few years latter just to see if the level of customer service was the same, it was another team.  The sales agent must have been on commission as he was pushy, uninformed, rude and really turned me off.  I asked him not about Polish but Russian this time, he said it teaches grammar well.  This is not true, not for Polish nor Russian or almost any other European language.

Is Rosetta bad?

Not at all.  I think the idea was great.  I love the idea and the effort they put into creating it.  However, for me personally it taught me little, it wasted my time (money was not a factor). Time is the most important thing, not the money.  It put me back six months, me messing around with their program and eventually coming to the realization I was not really learning anything.  I guess I did not want to believe it at first as their product looks so tempting. I think Rosetta is trying to improve in many ways but the core program has issues with the method.  I personally would not use it to learn any language but English. But its not all bad.  It looks nice, the hots are nice, they use native speakers.  So its not all bad, but Rosetta Stone Polish is just not for me personally.

Alternatives to Rosetta Stone Polish

You can read about these LearnFast Polish flashcards here -> Flash cards

Author: Mark Biernat

I live in with family between two worlds, US and Europe where I create tools for language learning. If you found my site you probability share my passion to be a life long learner. Please explore my site and comment.

One thought on “Rosetta Stone Polish”

  1. I agree 100%, A few programs Rosetta stone and The Michael Thomas Method try to teach a foreign language based on english grammer. I guess this approach tries to comfort the learner but in most cases makes learning the language more difficult as you found out from Rosetta Stone. Most adults have better reasoning skills then children so I feel that language software should teach some grammer.
    1st I learn 100/200 useful words and phrases then I move on to simple grammer. By knowing some grammer I am able to think in my target language and not just memorize words. Grammerwise Romance and Germanic languages much closer to English then Russian, so this approach my help with those languages.

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