That’s pronounced something like “zdravstuychte.” This week’s
Russian lesson consisted of some basic greetings and some other
vocabulary words. But for this first blog post it will probably be helpful if I
explain how Rosetta Stone’s language lessons work.
It’s set up, as you might expect, with five different levels
and various units and lessons within each level. I’m on level one and have worked through
the first couple units. The various lessons within each unit will help you with the following:
vocabulary, grammar, writing, pronunciation, and reading. But regardless of which
lesson you are on, in the end you’re always learning vocabulary, which is nice.
A big part of the RS method is to provide you with pictures for
every word or sentence, so that you can have some kind of visual to
connect the word or phrase with. It will typically show you a set of pictures and have a
word or phrase at the top that you match it up with. There is also always a
voice that pronounces it for you, and since I’m a good student, I say it back.
Now for some learning theory analysis: RS is heavy on
cognitive theory. Learning a new language can be a major overload on your
brain, and since your short-term memory can only hold so much at a time, each
lesson is fairly short, so as not to overburden your short-term memory
capacity. The longer lessons are usually at the end of a unit when you are
meant to recall what you have learned, i.e. retrieve the information from your
long-term memory. The RS lessons are pretty good at recycling the words it has
already given you. It doesn’t expect you to just learn it the first time
around, and so it will constantly bring the same words up, although in slightly
different ways, so that they can be more of a permanent part of your long-term
memory and can therefore be more easily recalled.
I am also thinking that the word and image method is
utilizing the “dual coding theory,” which says that we think with both words
and images. What RS does not do is provide you with the direct English
translation of a word or phrase, although sometimes I wish it did. Instead it
gives you the image and the Russian word, which you then need to match up. I
don’t think the book has said anything on this yet, but I think the main reason
RS uses this approach is because that is probably the main way that children
learn language—by just seeing and hearing, and trying to match up the images
with the words. This is certainly how my wife helps me in this. I constantly
ask her what that is, and that, and that.
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