Why I buy this one ?
- This powerful 2-CD set of learning tools adapts to your personal needs and imparts a strong foundation in a new language
- With this award-winning method used by NASA and the Peace Corps, you'll learn the way children do -- by associating words and phrases with the world around you
- Participate in over 200 lessons where you'll interact with fluent French speakers to build speaking & vocabulary skills
- Get a full tutorial in speaking and syntax skills
- Graphical speech recognition displays your voiceprint and compares it to native speaker to help improve pronunciation

What our customer's say!

"Great Software", Rosetta Stone is a great vocabulary builder, but doesn't teach grammer or sentence structure. Good for beginners.

"Not Nice", A month after I purchased this, Rosetta Stone comes out with a new release. Not nice.

"Learning Behind the Wheel is Better!", As I state in other product reviews, Rosetta Stone is clearly overrated but solid.
The problem with the overall approach is that it requires that you spend your learning time in front of a computer, which is where you do everything else. Lot's of competition.
I prefer to do my language learning during my otherwise wasted downtime while I drive. If I study a language while driving, I win because I use otherwise wasted hours. I, like most Americans, spend more time driving than ever before. When I get home, I want to do other essentials.
My favorite car French course is Behind the Wheel French 8 CD. Free up your computer and learn FrenchBehind the Wheel French (8 CD Course) (Behind the Wheel) while you drive is my recommendation

"Good as an introduction, not much beyond that", In the first lecture of his intensive course in Russian at Harvard, Professor Horace G. Lunt used to compare different methods of language learning. His comment on the "learn a language as a child does" was, "Do you really want to spend five years of your life learning to speak like a five-year old child?" His point was that an adult has several advantages in a language learning over a child. The two most important of these advantages are: (i) the adult already knows one language, and can compare the working of the second language with that and thus master the second easier; (ii) the adult can grasp grammatical concepts (which explain the structure of the language) and thus learn the structure of a language and how to manipulate it without having to infer this from an endless repetition of instances-- the adult can learn more efficiently.

These observations apply to the Rosetta Stone series. They are very good for teaching (relatively painlessly) basic vocabulary and the elementary working of a language. They don't go much beyond that. If you want to teach yourself how to manipulate a language and to produce responses automatically, the Foreign Service Institute courses, although a bit tedious, are far superior.

"A good start, but not much more", Rosetta Stone is decent product for learning the basics of French. It's advertising says it will allow you to learn a language the same way a child learns. That's true as far as it goes; the process introduces you to the basics to give you a familiarity with the language. I believe that someone who just uses the Rosetta Stone might be able to gain a basic proficiency. But it doesn't go beyond that.

For example, a child learning language can learn what she needs to be understood before she ever goes to school; the same applies to Rosetta Stone. However, at some point the child will to go to school to learn more. French in particular is a formal language and those who are interested will need to find some means of learning beyond the basics if they want to progress to a higher level.

The best thing about the program is the flexibility of modes - hearing, reading, seeing, speaking - which allows you to structure the process to best fit what works for you. The worst thing is it's too expensive for what you get, particularly when there is so much out there that is free.

Read this reviews before You buy...

"Rosetta Stone French Levels I and II", This product is helpful in many ways, unhelpful in others. Here are the unhelpful features:
1. While there is adequate learning of vocabulary and grammar, there is little opportunity to learn conversational French the way it is really spoken.
2. Typically, the product offers the learner panels of four pictures from which to choose the one correct response to a given statement or question. But frequently the choice is obvious--e.g., the statement or question has to do with horses, but only one of the four response panels shows horses. So one can guess the right response without really understanding what is being said or asked. No learning is taking place here. In the example cited, it would be better if all four response panels concerned horses so that the learner would really have to understand what is being said or asked in order to give the right response.
3. The breakdown of each level into lessons, units, and exercises is somewhat confusing, and navigating among them is awkward.
4. When moving from one four-panel section to the next, the native speaker's voice in the new section is often clipped off so that the first word or two is unheard. Hearing the entire phrase, of course, can make all the difference in understanding what the speaker is saying and is critical to giving the right response. The manufacturer has twice shown us how to adjust our computer's audio mechanism to fix this, but the fix still does not work very well. This is a fault in production of the software disk.
5. The software on the disk cannot be downloaded into the user's computer, meaing the user must insert the disk each time and wait for it to upload for use.

In general, this product is useful for beginners or near-beginners. If one already has some skeleton grasp of vocabulary and grammar, a higher level of learning is indicated.

"another great purchase with Amazon", Thanks for a great product. it was just as described!

"Lack of keyboard input painful for RSI sufferers", This is a great product that can really teach you to speak French quickly. However, the programmers have not done a very good job with translating the very good language learning system to software.

There is no keyboard input for this program, and you need to use the mouse constantly. In some portions, you use the keyboard to type, and repeatedly have to reach over for the mouse to check each line. If you have an RSI, expect severe pain in a very short time. I can't even continue with this due to shoulder pain. I have a mouse related RSI. A monkey could add keyboard control to this software as the interface is very well set up for it. It's baffling why they didn't do this.

As someone else mentioned, you have to have the disc in at all times (use Clone CD to make a copy, or you risk losing a lot of money if you carry the disc around with you), and I get tired of the CD drive noise on my PC. Also, there are some pauses as it accesses the CD, which would not happen if you could install the language files. They are so worried about someone pirating their product that they have made it less pleasant to use.

Also, for the price, I thought it would keep better track of my progress and perhaps be more intuitive. I have a $50 typing program that can made adjustments to the lessons based on my strong and weak areas, so why can't this.

It's a very good system for teaching French and I think very effective. The programming, however, is poor and the copy protection limits the usability of the program

Bottom line: I have had to stop using this after two days due to excrutiating shoulder pain. I avoid mousing due to my RSI, but this program forces me to use the mouse continually.

What a lame reason to have to stop using software in 2007! I guess handicapped people and persons without external mice for their laptops are screwed.

On the bright side - updating this software to include the missing, neccessary options, would be incredibly simple.

"Warning", I really like the Rosetta Stone product (although it is over priced).

WARNING: Rosetta Stone (Fairfield Language Technologies) will NOT replace a CD if it is lost, stolen or damaged unless you bought the product DIRECTLY from them (and then they charge you $30 for a replacement CD). I had the misfortune of purchasing from a local bookstore and someone had stolen the disk from inside the package. In this case I can get my money back from the store I bought it from but since you can't backup the disks you had better be VERY careful to not lose one.

"Awsome language product!", You learn extremely fast using Rosetta stone, and you learn to think about what the word is, not it's translation. Probably the best language system available.