Wednesday 31 October 2007

Episode II: Learning a foreign language with RosettaStone SharedTalk

It's probable that many people already know Rosetta stone line-products for self-teaching a new language aided by PC.
In this item, however, I want to speak about a new tool provided by Rosetta Stone to learn a foreign language not being alone, but with the help of a community.
Differently from the other RosettaStone products, Shared Talk does not need any installations
but you can make use of it without an installer and free of charge (at least at the time I'm writing!)
Indeed, all you need is an Internet connection and to sign up on the SharedTalk web site.
Since ShardTalk is a community you'll find many people that live in different angles of the world
and want to exchange their native language(s) with the one(s) they want to learn.
Going on look over its main features:

1) Mailbox.
After your registration, you''ll have the right to a private mailbox that you can access only by logging in on the SharedTalk web site.
However they provide a notification service to make you know when a new mail has been sent to you. Simply you'll receive a notification message on your electronic mailbox that you have provided during the registration.
In this way, they avoid spreading your email on the Internet.

2)Partner Search engine.
As I said SharedTalk is a community where people wish to learn a language by exchanging it, in
other words when you fill in your profile form, you have to choose which language(s) you can
teach and which one(s) you wish to learn.
Then with a partner search engine you can find among the community members the best for you.

3)Text Chat
As other Internet communities, SharedTalk is equipped with either a public text chat or a private text chat.
The public chats are categorized by language, for example there is a chat for speaking English, another for Russian and so on.

4)Voice Chat
At last but not least there is the Voice Chat, I think it's an innovative and useful feature and
probably SharedTalk is one of the few learning communities that have this tool.
In order to enter the Voice Chat you don't need any software like Skype but simply a microphone.
The voice chat is well developed because it lets you know which members are speaking and
which aren't, moreover you can know the country where the people are from.
and which language(s) they wish to practice.
These are the major characteristics in my opinion, however we have to take into account that SharedTalk, currently, is a beta release and probably new features will be added or improved.

On the whole I honestly suggest this website and the benefits like the registration which is free of charge, because in the future to join SharedTalk could become charged or conditioned by purchase of a RosettaStone product (This is my prevision I can't ensure you about that!)

Join Rosetta Stone Shared talk
http://www.sharedtalk.com/

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I would NOT recommend SharedTalk.com and suggest that you AVOID this site. It has come to my attention that the public and private chats are monitored by moderators. Personally, I don't like nor do I condone watching an individual's private conversation, but apparently they have no worries about violating people's privacy.

 

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