News Photo by Julie Goldberg The Alpena Community College Language Society shows off the new Rosetta Stone purchase the school recently received.

ALPENA — There is now Rosetta Stone at Alpena Community College for anyone to use to learn new languages.

There are 16 languages in the college’s Rosetta Stone library, including French, German, Spanish, Latin, and Japanese.

Karol Walchak, ACC instructor and adviser of the college’s Language Society, said she received an Emphasis on Learning grant to help with the purchase.

Eleven students and three faculty members are going to Europe in June for a week, part of an annual trip for Language Society members. Student Mikayla Williams said Rosetta Stone will help them get the exposure they need to have conversations with people while on the trip.

If people want to learn any language that is a part of the Rosetta Stone program, they can go to the college library, talk to the library resource people at the front desk, and get set up with a username and password. Walchak said the community can try to use the software.

“This is a resource to them,” she said.

People are asked to bring their own headphones when they want to use the software. Using headphones will not only help people listen to the Rosetta Stone, but the Rosetta Stone software can listen to them and tell them if they are pronouncing words the right or wrong way.

ACC Library Technician April Barres said each language can be loaded onto multiple computers, with five people using each computer, so multiple people can learn the same language at one time.

“This way, we can utilize the software more,” Barres said.

Walchak said that, with so many students not signing up to take the language courses, Rosetta Stone is one way to offer language without having a class.

It took a while for this year’s purchase to happen, Walchak said, but they’re hoping to grow it.

“It’s been at least four years’ gap between our first purchase and this purchase,” Walchak said. “Maybe next year, we’ll do more, it just depends.”

Julie Riddle can be reached at 989-358-5693 or jriddle@thealpenanews.com.