Rosetta Stone: Finally Speaking Wall Street's Language

• Report this Comment On August 10, 2011, at 10:11 PM, JohnConners wrote:

  Motley advisers keep missing the point about the

  army and marine contracts. The Rosetta Stone ads

  all said, "Used by the US Army," to give the impression that Rosetta Stone is the instructional

  material for the Army. In fact RS was made available

  to armed services members, but RS was never used

  at the Defense Language Institute as the primary

  instructional system. The Army has its own system that it has used for years and is much more detailed

  and comprehensive than the few levels RS offers.

  Whenever RS goes into a new market, there is an

  initial surge because naive people give it a try, but

  as it is used they find it is not a linguistically sophisticated program, in that it is not sequenced according to linguistic principles. RS thinks that their technological aspects are sophisticated, but

  they are paired with poor linguistics. That is why

  the market in the US is dropping. Few schools,

  considering RS' enormous efforts, have adopted

  the RS program and many that bought it no longer use it. The

  foreign language systems used in the schools of

  China, Japan, and Korea will continued to be used.

  RS will get some initial sales, but they cannot penetrate the school market because the English

  programs are an integrated part of the established

  school curricula in these several countries. The stock price is currently artificially elevated because

  of the three million shares that have been sold short. RS is far from a miracle system and is ignored by foreign language specialists and linguists. As you look at the history of RS, before

  its purchase by the two venture companies, you will

  see that it is a copy of other systems. It is not their

  invention and, I believe, they do not know how

  language acquisition takes place. For example,

  advertising that their program mimics first language learning is absurd. What babies use a

  microphone and repeat words into it to determine

  whether their pronunciation is correct? What baby

  practices conversation when beginning to listen to

  language. RS is an unfortunate educational

  model.

• Report this Comment On August 24, 2011, at 4:04 AM, Windsurfing1 wrote:

  They keep missing the numbers I am looking for. International growth should have stayed at a growth rate north of 100%, as it started off two years ago. It's plunge to 58% described in this article as a success.... I liked the company, but I think it is over, unless they come up with really cheap introductory offer south of 50 USD, as I proposed multiple times already.

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