Daily Star reporter Andréa Oldereide tested Rosetta Stone Sapphire to prepare for an upcoming trip to Mexico, choosing Latin American Spanish and finding the app's immersive lessons and pronunciation feedback particularly useful.
Immersive Learning for Travel
The app uses Rosetta Stone's Dynamic Immersion method, which teaches through images, sounds and real-life context rather than long word lists. The reporter noted this approach mirrors how people learn when immersed in a new place.
A standout feature was TruAccent speech recognition, which compares the user's pronunciation against millions of examples from native speakers and provides instant feedback. The reporter highlighted that this immediate correction is crucial for building confidence, especially when travelling to a destination like Mexico.
Realistic Practice Scenarios
Chat Missions offered realistic conversation scenarios with a virtual partner across travel, social and work situations, complete with corrections and explanations. This allowed the reporter to rehearse interactions likely to be faced during the trip.
For quick vocabulary boosts, the Flashcards feature covers more than 500 topics, amounting to over 6,000 individual flashcards per language. Sapphire Studio also enables users to create personalised study materials, such as custom flashcards, vocabulary lists, matching games and reading guides.
Pricing and Availability
Rosetta Stone has been operating since 1992, and Sapphire is described as the brand's biggest launch in 10 years, following its US debut in August by parent company IXL Learning. The app is available in the UK for £15.99 per month billed monthly, or £10.75 per month billed yearly as £129, with access to all 25 languages.
Upcoming discounts include 25% off yearly during Cyber Week from 26 to 30 November 2026, 20% off yearly on the Gift page from 20 to 25 December, and 20% off yearly or monthly from 29 December to 3 January.
