An over-priced and a flawed platform for language acquisition.
The idea of their system is basically to learn as you learnt your native language.
When we learn our native languages our brains are very different and picking up on the odd noun here and there before moving on to verbal structures in a process that can last up to 6 years works relatively well.
However, we as adults are able to master complex phrases with little effort and therefore are much better suited to acquiring the most frequently used verbal structures and common phrases before moving on to expand our lexicon by learning individual nouns.
For example the early stages of Rosetta Stone will have you repeating such sentences as:
'The boy drinks milk' or 'the man is under the plane'
When you should be focussing on the what, when, why, where and how of the language.
Also it costs around $600 for a level three course, where as a system like Teach Yourself costs around $30 and is equivalent to level 4 on the European scale.
Start with book/cd combinations such as the Teach Yourself series, colloquial series or Assimil (the latter being slightly more expensive than the former two).
Then look for language meetup clubs or adult classes/conversation clubs.
Ensure to purchase a good learner's dictionary, for example Langenscheidt provide an array of dictionaries aimed at learners (specifically to German natives, but others as well such as Collins or Oxford for English natives).
Also if you do not have an active learning environment to operate in, then create one; for example, learning Mandarin? Go to China town an make some friends, introduce yourself and yes strike up a conversation with a stranger purely on the basis that you are learning Mandarin.
I study 9 languages, and am proficient in 4-5 of them, as well as having conversational fluency in the others.
Rosetta stone will not help you.
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Anonymous2012-06-26 10:59
I don't know any good guides, but you may ask your questions about language itself here, I'll try to help.