Rosetta Stone Portuguese Review

There are 92 lessons encompassing the language learning fundamentals including listening comprehension, reading, speech recognition and writing, but out of these you could choose the learning path you take with Rosetta Stone Portuguese. You don’t have to take the exercises in any order. There are previews and exercises for all lessons and because the program presents the Portuguese language in a different way than other programs, it does not include familiar tools such as a dictionary, glossary, translators, word converters or word and root search. Instead, it teaches the language by concepts and images rather than translation.

The dynamic immersion method employed by Rosetta Stone Portuguese requires active participation with all the lessons taught in Portuguese. After loading the application and hooking up your headphone w/ microphone, repeat the examples to see how close your pronunciation to that of native Portuguese speakers. Just follow the examples in the exercises, the learning process is painless. Practice your listening and reading comprehension with the on-screen text and dictation. This language learning program will feel natural for anyone who is serious about learning Portuguese because it lets you use your correlation, deduction, introduction and pattern recognition skills which you are using in daily conversations.

With Rosetta Stone's Portuguese course you learn to accept the language in its own terms so there is no need for translation. Translation is a skill in itself that not everybody can master, including many people who are fluent in different languages. Translation should be the last part of learning a language, not the first, because of the difficulty involved, so since you are just starting to learn a language, the program should not place unnecessary strain on your brain at this point. Rosetta Stone Portugal uses different kinds of exercises that check and re-check to make sure you get the lesson and if you need to hone up on a particular skill you can just press the bail-out button at the lower right corner to go back and tackle whatever lesson needs your attention.

Rosetta Stone's Portuguese learning program does not have interactive games but does include flash cards. Other language learning programs have at least one game that helps to make the learning process enjoyable. Rosetta Stone has a FAQ page in their website that has a link to online help, yet you won’t probably need this because the program is very easy to use even for young children.

Rosetta Stone Portuguese is easy to install within three minutes and it is simple enough for computer novices to operate. You have to remember though that the software does not include conversation practice, grammar and vocabulary. When you buy the software, you will receive an audio CD with a reference book and it uses more than 3500 pictures as the main teaching tools for the student to learn Portuguese through association. I would have preferred the program have a Portuguese – English dictionary. Also, I would have preferred the pictures to be specific to the Portuguese culture and not generic ones and they should replace all cartoon etchings from earlier versions with pictures. I also found a few language errors in the program.

Comprehensive language course

Good interactive emphasis on the learning process

Slow vocabulary learning

Sometimes unclear quizzes

Sometimes not teaching useful phrases

Expensive ($579.00 USD for all 3 levels)

The publishers of Rosetta Stone Portuguese have done a lot of research and planning in delivering a very good course for language acquisition as well as innovative software, but it could have been better. The photographs used in the program are generic and not culturally specific to Portuguese. If this were the case, the student would not learn just the language, but also the unique culture and geography, the setting in which the language is used. For instance, pictures of the Mexican dancers should be replaced by Brazilian dancers because Mexico has little to do, if any, with Brazilian culture. If you're looking for an easier and much cheaper, but nevertheless comprehensive, Portuguese learning course, we do recommend Transparent Portuguese.