Software Evaluation: Rosetta Stone Arabic Level One

Software Evaluation
ESL 5073-Spring 2010
Rosetta Stone Arabic Level One

I. General Description: Rosetta Stone for Arabic Level One

www.rosettastone.com

Includes Levels one, two, and three

Age range: 12-adult

Activities include interactive word matching to pictures, memorizing vocabulary, working on pronunciation, becoming familiar with alphabet, and memorizing phrases.
II. Evaluation: The speed of the program is fairly fast and fluid, unless you run into a kink where you are not sure what to do; then it is difficult to proceed. The reliability of the operation of the program was very high. I had no problems with reliability. Screen management was very good, except for one instance when I was unsure how to work the program and I could not continue. I had to navigate to the bottom of the screen and skip ahead to continue. Exploitation of computer potential was very good. The program uses photos and sound very well. They will move the photos so that you cannot remember which photo you have used, making guessing more difficult. Speech recognition worked very well. I think with Arabic program they are more forgiving with your pronunciation than with Spanish making it easier to move ahead. Either that or my Arabic pronunciation is better than my Spanish!

III. Activities (Procedure): I believe the activities could be considered Communicative. The whole idea of the drills is to build on what you have heard in earlier slides to answer the current slide. You build on what you have heard before and also use intuition to try and figure out what is being said now. I feel this program is very intuitive, and if you don’t try too hard, just going with the flow you will learn better. Vocabulary and pictures are being presented to you and also words and phrases in the Arabic alphabet. It would be impossible to know exactly what is being said or written. But the information does build on itself.

IV. Teacher Fit: I believe that Rosetta Stone for Arabic Level one would work well in conjunction with a structured class. It could be used during lab time, and supplement lab activities for listening and speaking. The Communicative nature of the program would work well in a classroom environment, and the teacher could build on the methods used in the program. For example, the fact that the material builds on itself in the program in order to understand vocabulary could be used as a method in the classroom: the teacher could use the same method in her teaching.

V. Learner Fit (Design): The Linguistic level of the program is high. I believe using the program in conjunction with a formal class would be helpful. Response handling went fairly smoothly except for one activity where I was unsure of what to do and had trouble moving forward. Adapting to learner differences could be a problem as even level one seemed fairly advanced. I think students with very structured learning styles may have difficulty with Rosetta Stone Arabic level one because of the intuitive nature of the program. The learning strategy of the program is definitely visual/graphic and sound oriented.

VI. In my opinion, the program could be very helpful in learning Arabic, but as a supplement to a class. I intend to use this program in the future to learn Arabic and Spanish. I would recommend Rosetta Stone to other people.