Italian language course:Language Learning, the Natural Way

Americans are lousy at foreign languages. I myself took French for years and years, and still can barely tell a Paris cab driver where I want to go without stumbling into English, and earning a Gallic glare.

There are various reasons for this. Compared with Europeans, most Americans have many fewer chances outside classrooms to practice languages other than English, and much less need to do so. But one cause may be the way we teach foreign languages, with mind-numbing drills and long lectures on grammar.

One computer language program, however, continues to garner popularity for its very different teaching style. The Rosetta Stone language program aims to make learning easier and more effective by scrapping dense explanations in favor of a visual teaching style featuring pictures, audio and text.
Created by Fairfield Language Technologies in 1992, Rosetta Stone has been adopted by West Point, NASA and over 10,000 schools, according to the company. You might recognize the product if you've passed by one of the company's kiosks in an airport or shopping mall.

The product's teaching method attempts to emulate the experience of a native-born speaker by immersing you in one of 29 languages using photos, spoken phrases and written words. Unlike most language classes, you don't memorize vocabulary or verb conjugations. There are no explanations, and no definitions. You just plunge in. Skeptical? So were we.

So, this week, my assistant Katie Boehret and I did our best to learn Spanish and Italian with Rosetta Stone. Katie minored in Spanish in college, so she approached the language from an educated perspective, trying advanced Spanish. Then, she sampled the starter lessons in Italian, a language she didn't know. I, being much dumber at languages than she is, tried Spanish at a beginner's level.

Overall, we liked Rosetta Stone, which works on both Windows and Macintosh computers. We found ourselves catching onto words and phrases by association—just from seeing a photo, hearing a pronunciation, and figuring out what a certain phrase meant. The more familiar we became with each language, the easier it was to grasp the self-guided lessons. We didn't have enough time to fully evaluate the program, but it was easy to start using and simple enough to use regularly, without feeling overwhelmed.


By WALTER S. MOSSBERG