Talk Now! Swedish

Rating:
Summary: EuroTalk Swedish
Review: I found this CD to be very useful in reviewing Swedish, which I had studied years ago. I have sampled other products and found them to be ponderous, making language learning more of a chore than it ought to be. The EuroTalk CD's (I have several) are the most fun to do. Will you become proficient in the language by using this CD? Hardly, but you will get a good grounding and it's just fun if you are like me and like to study foreign languages. I wish Amazon.com would make the more advanced levels available as well. I think this CD would be very useful as well for the traveler who just wants an intro to the language. Most Swedes speak English, but not all are comfortable with it. And everyone appreciates an effort to learn the language of the home country.

Rating:
Summary: not recommended
Review: I read the online reviews of this product and thought it looked good or at least good enough. It isn't.

The image editing is incredibly jerky and the actors' smiles are downright creepy when seen time and time and time again! (Were the option available to exclude the actors from the screen while still hearing them speak, it would be a better product.)

Though some of the vocabulary presented may be useful, the content of the CD does not offer much in the way of sentence or phrase help.

Rating:
Summary: When you just need to hear it...
Review: I was having a great deal of trouble learning Swedish from books because I just couldn't "hear" it inside my head. A friend of mine loaned me this CD and it helped a great deal to get past that challenge. It is a very simple program and there isn't much depth, but I did find it useful because (as Swedish is uncommon here in rural New York) I needed to hear phrases to orient myself. The vocabulary and phrases taught are primarily for tourists. I would rate it higher if the price were just a bit lower, more in line with it's true value.