Laundry and Lullabies: Rosetta Stone Latin giveaway

Wednesday, May 13, 2009

Rosetta Stone Latin giveaway

Gabe and I have often tossed around the idea of teaching our kids Latin. Only we don't know Latin. I've heard great things about Rosetta Stone for language learning, though, so I'm really excited about this giveaway!

Here is the information:

Rosetta Stone is the fastest way to learn a language and has been the #1 foreign language curriculum among homeschoolers for a while — and you can WIN the *all new* version 3 Rosetta Stone Homeschool LATIN program… FOR FREE! This is the first year you can get Latin in the brand new Version III update.

This is a $259 program (and believe me it’s worth every penny!)
This is a computer based curriculum and Rosetta Stone will also include a headset with microphone, and a supplementary “Audio Companion” CD so you can practice lessons in the car, on the go, or where-ever! Students participate in life-like conversations and actually produce language to advance through the program. Rosetta Stone incorporates listening, reading, grammar, vocabulary and writing along with speaking and pronunciation lessons. For parents, the new Parent Administrative Tools are integrated into the program to allow parents to easily enroll up to ten students in any of 12 predetermined lesson plans, monitor student progress, grade completed work (the program grades the work automatically as the students progress- I love that!), and you can view and print reports for transcripts. Homeschooling a lot of kids at your house? This program is designed to enroll and track up to ten students (five users on two computers) and will work for nearly all ages — from beginning readers up to college students.

To win this most excellent Latin program copy these paragraphs and post them in (or as) your next blog post, and/OR link to the contest from your facebook page and/OR email the information to your homeschool support group – Then go to the original page http://Jeneralities.com and leave a comment saying that you’ve posted about, or have linked to, the contest. Please make sure the link works to get back to the original contest page when you post. And good luck!

4 comments:

Anonymous said...: Hi Emily,
I used the Latin Rosetta Stone program in high school, and found it to be absolutely terrible. Rosetta Stone's method of teaching is by immersion, which is great for languages that don't rely on declensions and parsing and the like. I would highly suggest that you look into some Latin teaching books before buying the Rosetta Stone program, because it is a lot of money to spend on something that just doesn't work for this language!
-Justy; 1:26 PM
Amber said...: I really wouldn't recommend Rosetta Stone for teaching Latin. I'll second what your last commenter wrote.

Personally, I think learning Latin in that way defeats the purpose of learning Latin. I think that a great deal of the point of learning Latin is that it helps to learn structure, logic, and all the nuts and bolts of language - all things that are lost in an immersion program. Learning how to read great works in their original is also a wonderful benefit, but I think it is secondary. A great book for you and Gabe to read is Climbing Parnassus - I highly recommend it.

There are good Latin programs out there for homeschooling families with no prior Latin knowledge. Take a look at memoriapress.com, for example.; 3:18 PM
theguide42 said...: I have to agree with what the last two commenters said. Latin includes conjugation, declension, and a very formalized structure for all types of vocabulary (gerunds, gerundives, participles, relatives, etc.). Rosetta Stone's "immersion" technique is improper for a technical understanding of a language- which is the whole point of learning Latin. Rosetta Stone enables you to learn a language the way a child does...so that you can hold a conversation and "go with your gut" when speaking, relating foreign words and phrases to pictures and events rather than to words in the host language. While this may work for languages such as Russian or Chinese, because it separates the foreign language from the host language entirely, Latin is so closely tied to English that learning it will boost mastery of both languages!

Now as for the kids, I recommend no better Latin-learning resource than Wheelock's Latin textbook and workbook, a Latin-English dictionary, and a Latin Vulgate translation of the Bible. Get the kids a tutor who knows Latin, and hit the books! If you don't want to get a tutor, at least start them off learning Latin vocabulary, no grammar, because you can teach them that yourself- each Latin word will have a one-to-one translation in English.; 6:04 PM
Linds said...: I third the comments here - Use Rosetta Stone for spoken languages (there's really nothing better) but not dead ones (there's not much worse). Go with Wheelocks! It's both excellent curriculum and the translations are all from classic texts. :); 8:29 PM