Saturday, February 21, 2009

Rosetta Stone Part 1

So here is how Unit 1- Lesson One went.

I did the lesson first, which is a good thing because the instructions for each section are not very clear. It's possible if I had sat through that whole long introduction to the program part it may have been explained it there, but I tuned out after 10 minutes of hearing about the "total immersion system".

Lesson one equaled about 30 minutes. You go through 5 different parts... pronunciation, grammar, spelling, writing, .... and others. There is a lot of repetition which is GREAT. You will see the core Lesson One words in different ways, spoken and writen, at least 50 times. You will repeat those words back to the program prabably 25-30 times.

They introduce a word by speaking it and showing it over a picture of the item, then you match the spoken/shown word to a matching picture. You do that for several different items, in this lesson is was about learning girl, boy, lady, man. They then toss in things for those people to do, in this lesson eat, drink, cook, swim, run, and write. Only they don't tell you straight up BEBEN=DRINK. You have to figure that out from the picture and probably getting a few questions wrong. This I found frustrating.
You are also asked to speak the word/phrase into the microphone and it grades your try. In the pronuciation section it breaks the words down into parts and grades your trys. NA, then DA, for swim. (yeah I didn't know this was swim either I thought it was the word for nothing) I was fine with this section til the word CO-ME. I was about to toss the laptop into the street over the CO part. It wanted a short gutteral CO almost like a cough. That was totally un-natural for me.
When my son sat down to the computer for his Lesson One I sat and watched him because I knew he would have questions on the HOW TO end. Like when it says Una Nina (pretend that has a ~ over the n) and then pops up this blank window and then it waits. And if you didn't have help you'd be like... okkkkkk now what. Which is exactly what he did. This is where you repeat the word to it and it DINGS or BONGS.
There is also a audio companion CD. So far it's listen and repeat. I'll let you know more about it after we move on.

So far my cons are only that if you are using a computer with a touchy touch pad or one that likes to randomly lock up you will lose parts of your lesson and take a hit in the score department. It does grade you. This irriated my son no end. When we got to the end of his lesson one we realized it lost two sections of his lesson totally so he will have to retake those because this is for his school. This happened to me also but since I know I did take the section and passed it at the time, I'm not retaking it.

I'll update again after Unit 1-Lesson Two.

Thursday, February 19, 2009

Rosetta stone so far rocks. We can have different users so I set myself up a user name. I did the first part of the first lesson and it's pretty good.

Baby goats should arrive tomorrow.

Sarah... I will take you up on that offer. I may not have the stamina to clean out a hard kidding. I'm knocking on wood I don't have any of those... ROFL.

Yes Mandy looks like one of 4 LOL.
Awww. I got the sweetest anonymous comment yesterday and it made me feel really guilty for avoiding my blog.

Yes, avoiding.

Because how much talk about my nasty poor health can 3 people stand. And two of you talk to me in real life so you get the story TWICE. At least parts of the story twice. Because really, here I only highlight things. That's because I'm a horrible writer and I know it.

So here is the basic update.

I've been home for just shy of a month and have another ripping lung infection. I am back on a different antibiotic, pill form. The inhaled one I take daily is a heavy duty one, but it's only for one specific infection and this is probably not a flare up of that one. We did order, and I was able to produce, a sputum culture (mucus from lungs) to see what I'm growing. Again. So quickly.

We know that the reason my lung are in this bad of shape is because the last year I've had reoccurring infections going that weren't treated heavily enough. What we didn't realize is how fast they were reoccurring. Normally I wouldn't have seen the signs of this infection coming like I did this time because I wasn't ever in as "good" of shape as I was coming out of the hospital.

Good... that's relative I hope you know. I can be off my 02 during the day. As long as I don't DO anything. I am by far getting stronger all the time. I unloaded a huge amount of my stress yesterday because I just can't make a commitment too far in advance. I'm even afraid to say, HEY next week lets do something... because I hate to cancel and change plans, that irritates me and I never know how I'll feel tomorrow let alone in a week.

My pets are fine, my cat is still lost, my goats are due to kid any second, my husband is about to be laid off again, my son is recovering from the flu/bacterial gut infection, his school is going well, my mother is still coming weekly to help clean my house, and it's sunny today.

Is it odd that my dog, the long hund, seems to know when my lungs are getting worse before I do? She isn't a really clingy dog, but shortly before I notice I'm "sick" she starts clinging to me. Like VELCRO. Like right now she's so close to my leg she might as well be UNDER my butt. Well ok, thigh.

Ok the teacher is coming. We are getting Rossetta Stone Spanish soon, I hope it's here.

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Nothing to see here.... move along.