La femme boit du café.

It's been a month since I started my Rosetta Stone French lessons (read my first post about it here) and I thought I'd post an update on my progress or rather lack there of. After such a great start I knew that I'd eventually hit a few bumps in the road.

I have to admit that I have not diligently done an hour a day as is recommended by the program. I miss a few days and then cram a few lessons all in one day and end up somewhat confused. But that aside I'm still just not sure if I'll ever be able to hold a normal conversation with someone. Oh I'll be able to state the obvious like- "The boy wore a blue shirt." or "The man drove a green car.", something that will come in handy if I witness a robbery but for my intended purpose I just can't see an actual conversation emerging out of these sort of declaratives.

I know that I need to give it time and that I'm not even half way through the first level so I have no basis to even start to complain but I just feel like the method of teaching might not be the best for me. I took Spanish for four years in high school so I'm used to learning the nouns, learning the verbs, conjugating them and then putting together a sentence. I think because I learned in this way I am complicating Rosetta's "learning the way you learned your own language as a child" method by trying to break every word down instead of just putting the given phrase to the action and picture.

I Googled Rosetta Stone the other day to see what others had to say about the program. Most said that they found it effective as an introduction to a new language. That it's easy to use and easy to pick up on and learn vocabulary. But most expressed the same concern that I have and a lot of people said that they recommend using Rosetta as a side tool to a book and workbooks. (I am going to look into this, I am very much a workbook type person!)

With all that said, I can positively say that I have learned and retained a ton of vocabulary in my short time using it. It's surprising how much I can re-call and how much the image-word association really works. I actually see those pictures in my mind when I'm saying the words. I will keep plugging away. I plan to finish the entire level and then assess whether or not to purchase the next level or try something else. For now I leave you with this- La femme lit et écrit en français. (The woman reads and writes in French. Sorry, stating the obvious is the best I got right now!) Au Revoir!