Japanese Language Learning Programs

#1 is RocketJapanese. #2 is Rosetta Stone. And #3 is Pimlur or something like that.

In my opinion, I agree with RocketJapanese being #1. However, I do not think Rosetta Stone is that great. I'll tell you about the different points (good and bad) about RocketJapanese and Rosetta Stone. I haven't tried Pimlur or whatever it was called, so I can't really say anything about that.

RocketJapanese...well, first of all, it's considered to be #1. But, it's also only $100 for a limited time, and Rosetta Stone is #2, but is $500 for levels 1, 2, and 3 Japanese put together.

In my opinion, RocketJapanese is more fun than Rosetta Stone. In the audio tracks (there's audio tracks [they're downloadable so you can listen to them on your MP3 player or w/e], text lessons, and software-ish games called MegaVocab, MegaAudio, and MegaHiragana. You learn about Kanji, and I think-- Katakana too, so don't worry.) the hosts' voices sound lively so you're not bored. Like you know how sometimes you have those teachers that talk in a drone-voice, and then you get bored and don't pay attention? That's how the voices on Rosetta Stone sound like sometimes. Or maybe I'm hearing wrong.

But anyway, with Rosetta Stone, you just match up pictures with words/phrases/sentences over and over again, which gets boring. At first, it might be ok, but in level 1 Japanese Rosetta Stone, you do that for a section at least 10 times, so it gets annoying. Rosetta Stone also does not really have any English, so it can't really explain things to you.

With RocketJapanese, they still talk in English as well, and they have text lessons where they can explain things to you easier. RocketJapanese helps you learn Japanese in less than 2 months, and I'm pretty sure that's faster than the average time it takes for you to learn the language with Rosetta Stone. If I'm wrong, please correct me.

By the way, I think RocketJapanese focuses more on conversational Japanese, but I think you can focus more on reading/writing characters if you want to.

If I was rating these 2 products, I would rate RocketJapanese 5 stars, and Rosetta Stone 3. However, I'm only taking the FREE 6-day trial for RocketJapanese, so I have yet to talk to my dad about actually buying the whole thing. But I'm hoping I can, because I don't think Rosetta Stone is working for me. It may work for other people though.

I just made a post about this so I could vent out my frustration, I guess, and so that you could see the different points about each program from someone who has experienced them. But to be honest...I don't think I said any bad points about RocketJapanese at all... *sweatdrop* I can't really think of any...