You might see a picture of an egg, for instance, while hearing the French word for egg (œuf) several times. The idea, ostensibly, is to learn the language by example and from contextual information, rather than memorizing translations or rules. Unfortunately, after three years of Rosetta Stone, I still found myself barely capable of putting together one coherent sentence in French.
At this point, I was about to start my senior year of high school, which I spent at the Interlochen Arts Academy in Michigan. I was kept busy there with many music-related things, and unfortunately, I did not have time to take a French class. Nonetheless, I found myself more and more wanting to learn a language; there were many, many international students at Interlochen who spoke multiple languages (several of my friends there spoke 3 - 4 languages very well) – the ability to move effortlessly between different languages (as well as the extensive knowledge of non-American cultures that so many of my peers had) seemed to me like a superpower. I wanted to be able to do that.
When I went to college, I needed to take a few language classes as part of my general education requirements. I chose French since I had worked with it before, but having hardly learned anything from Rosetta Stone, I had to start in French 101, the very lowest introductory class offered. This second attempt at learning the language, however, went much better than the first – I found to my surprise that despite not having learned any vocabulary or grammar from my Rosetta Stone days, I had managed to pick up a little bit of the pronunciation. That helped me a lot.
