In Rosetta Stone, each course is broken into units, each with several lessons. I'm on Unit 1, the language basics unit. Later units in the course are on pretty standard topics, greetings, introductions, shopping, etc. I just wrapped up lesson two of the first unit. Ugh, the going is slow. There is so much repetition that I get lazy by the end. There are a bunch of activities within the lesson. Some of them are listening based, where you hear a phrase, and match it to the picture. Some have you typing in the spelling of the words, some just have you matching words to pictures, and some have you selecting words from drop-down boxes to complete the phrase as you hear it. There are a few more variations. The issue is that you go through each of these activities with the same set of words and phrases within a lesson. And on top of that there's repetition within each activity. Like, one page you might be matching "the man runs" (l'uomo corre), "the woman runs", "the girl runs", "the boy runs", and on the next page you match "the girl runs", "the girl walks", etc. So, needless to say, the repetition is high. And, in this second lesson, in addition to the new material presented, you redo some activities from lesson 1. There will be some more variety as there is more back-material to draw on, but as it is, I can barely stand to do a whole half-hour lesson in a sitting. I'm going to stick with it a little more, in the hopes that it picks up the pace.
At this point, I feel like this is in essence a vocab and grammar building exercise. I need to try the next lesson using a microphone, since there is apparently some cool voice recognition and matching stuff that Rosetta Stone has to offer. You know, improve my pronunciation. Maybe it will be really cool and it will have you answer questions by speaking...
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