Rosetta Stone is a multimedia application packaged for many different world languages. There are three levels available for their Polish TOTALe product, and I made it through most of the second level. 

At times I enjoyed Rosetta Stone Polish or I would never have spent so much time on it. It can be kind of fun. But the reality is, it didn’t translate into useful oral skills for me, and I just can’t get excited about it. I discussed some of my misgivings about the Rosetta Stone approach in a blog entry back in December of 2011.

Unfortunately, my beloved Pimsleur audio lessons are barely available for Polish; there are only 30 of them. That is what drove me into the arms of Rosetta Stone. Polish is not exactly at the top of the most-studied-languages list in the U.S., and product choice remains relatively limited. Rosetta Stone Polish isn’t useless, but I just don’t feel all the study hours I logged did much for me.

Included in Rosetta Stone’s pricing is access to online classes, called Studio sessions, with native speakers. If you take full advantage of those, then Rosetta Stone Polish might be more worthwhile. I did not; I instead ran around trying to speak to Polish people in New York, which I find more entertaining that staring at a computer screen.

If I were to start again with Polish in the future, I would probably try Assimil, though for this option you need to already speak another European language (such as Dutch, French, German, or Italian), since they don’t offer a Polish product for English speakers.