Rosetta Stone
Rosetta Stone offers an easy-to-use desktop version as well as the finest mobile language learning app we tested. Once you log in, your progress is synced across all learning platforms, allowing you to begin a course at home and finish it on the app during your lunch break or morning commute. Its strategy is to immerse you completely in the French language - all of the text and speech are in French - and to provide you with visual cues to help you learn. It also relies on repetition to ensure that all of the lessons are remembered.
The voice recognition tool makes use of Rosetta Stone's TruAccent technology to help you perfect your pronunciation so you can engage effectively with native speakers. Most of the applications we tried had speech recognition, and while it wasn't flawless, we found Rosetta Stone's to be among the most accurate.
If you wish to study French classes without utilizing Wi-Fi or cellular data, the audio companion is a terrific option. These audio-only lessons can be downloaded to a mobile device or music player. If you wish to brush up on your vocabulary before a flight to a French-speaking country, you can use use downloadable lessons. Rosetta Stone provides live tuition if you are having difficulty understanding some of the lesson concepts. You can communicate with a native French-speaking tutor in real time. The live teacher service is not free (unless you are a business user), but it is an excellent way to improve your pronunciation and sentence structure.
Website: www.rosettastone.com
Reasons to buy
- Easy to use
- Great mobile app
- Live tutoring available
Reasons to avoid
- Some features require additional fees
