A few days ago I was talking with a friend who is the principal of a school where most of the students are Hispanic. She told me that most of the students that start in kindergarden speak no English or it is very limited English. We also talked about the importance of resources that can reduce the gap that non-English speakers suffer in their education. She told me that they wanted to buy software to help the students to improve their English during their fist years of education. She said that the younger the better. This was not a surprise. As many of you know, English is my second language and learning it has been a little rough. Spanish is also my major and I plan to teach it in Middle or high school. As I was surfing on internet and talking with my husband about all this he told me about a software that was used in one of the schools where he taught. This software was created to help ELL students. The software is Rosetta Stone. So I went online to search and read some reviews. I found a website that compares the top ten software for learning Spanish. This software was rated number four. It is a little pricy but according to my husband it is worth it. I also visited the Rosetta Stone Web site and saw that it can be used to complement classroom teaching or to allow students to work independently, building their basic speaking, listening comprehension, reading and writing skills. Rosetta Stone Classroom is a language-learning solution for different educational segments such as K-5, 6-12, College level, adult education and ESL (http://www.rosettastone.com/schools/solutions). When I start teaching, Rosetta Stone is going to be one of the first resources I investigate in depth. I still have some questions about the program that I probably can clear up by visiting schools that are using it. I think that personal experience is the best review you can get.
I recommend also visiting the following website to compare Rosetta Stone with other software programs. It gives you a list of the software’s features.
http://learn-spanish-software-review.toptenreviews.com/
