As a diver, why would you want to learn a new foreign language?
If you have in mind significant travel to parts of the world where English or your current languages are not widely spoken, the practical benefits are obvious. And you may be surprised to discover that some of these places are not as far from home as you might imagine.
When diving overseas or in parts of the UK popular with tourist divers, you may also enjoy being able to exchange a few words beyond the basic dive drills if you find yourself buddied with a foreign-speaking diver.
Depending on the language in question, they might be seriously impressed!
And if you are considering working as a dive guide or instructor, language skills can greatly improve your employment options.
Of course, language study typically represents a major time commitment - but can technology offer a better route?
Language courses using audio recordings have been around for decades, but the capability of modern computers offers new approaches. And the ambitious claim of Rosetta Stone is that its software provides "the fastest, most effective way to learn a language".
Developed in the early 1990s, and now available in more than 30 languages, it aims to do this by combining images directly with words in the new language, rather than through translated text and grammar theory.
Dubbed "dynamic immersion", this method is said to mimic the way children learn their first language by "immersing you in a language, surrounding you with words, images and sounds on your computer".
Does it work? Dipping into the Level 1 Italian course for a couple of hours a week over a month or so, I went through the first of four units featuring various agreeably illustrated exercises under headings such as Vocabulary, Grammar, Pronunciation, Listening, Speaking and Reading.
At the start of each session, there was a useful invitation for progress to be reinforced with a phrase along the lines of: "It's time to refresh your memory on an earlier lesson. Last time, on April 15, 2010, you scored 89%."
And a Review session provided useful consolidation at the end of each main unit.
Access to the online (rather than CD-Rom based) version that I used operated well, and the software seemed clearly organised and intuitive. In particular, the screen layout enabled easy return to earlier modules. The ability to repeat a missed phrase by clicking was helpful, as were verbal prompts at tricky moments, although occasionally a faster method of going back to a previous screen to check written words and phrases would have been helpful.
Unsurprisingly, any incidental diving-specific vocabulary in the early lessons - for example "Il pesce è grande" (illustrated in one of the exercises by the photograph of a diver with an outsize potato cod) - offered limited practical scope.
But I felt that, should the opportunity arise, the brief time invested would enable me to exchange pleasantries and pick up the gist of the odd spoken or written Italian phrase.
For the serious user, the system represents a convenient way of making good advances over quite a short time period. It's all rather fun, too.
Nigel Eaton
Rosetta Stone courses are available in more than 30 languages, from French and German to Arabic and Indonesian. Prices range from £169 for the Level 1 Set (including headset and microphone) to £479 for a package taking you up to Level 5 (which promises to enable you to "converse freely and discuss complex situations confidently and accurately"). Alternatively, all five levels are available online at £129 for a subscription lasting six months, or £199 for 12 months. www.rosettastone.co.uk
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