Rating: 
Summary: Just... a terrible method.
Review: This is just bad. That says it all. It throws you into a shark tank, with EVERYTHING being in Polish, from beginning to end. The only thing I was able to absorb was the Polish alphabet. Even learning the alphabet took me days. The book is a much better way to go when learning a language. This is too fast paced, spoken too quickly, and absolutely no good for beginners. Only people who know an intermediate amount of Polish will find this good. Pros:
Easy to learn alphabet, with practice Cons:
Too fast paced
Everything written in Polish from start to end
No Polish/English dictionary
NO GOOD GRAMMAR HELP (biggest problem)
Speakers talk to fast, making much of the talks sound like jibberish, especially if you are new to the Polish tongue Overall, just plain BAD. Transparent Language's way to approach language learning just doesn't work. The book is a much better method. Just take a class with the book and it will be MUCH easier and less stressful to learn another language. And if you choose to use computer software, DO NOT use Transparent Language products.
Rating: 
Summary: Now I can communiate with my colleagues!!
Review: I was recently hired to work for a Dutch-owned business. Their English is very good; my Dutch was non-existent. While it wasn't required that I speak Dutch, I often find technical articles in our joint database that look as if they could be useful. I could have them translated by the other employees, but it would be nice to sort through them myself. It would also be polite to be able to say a few words in their native language. I looked on the internet for Dutch translation/language packages and found very few. Several were much too expensive to be useful. Then I found Transparent Language's Learn Dutch Now! It's a life-saver! The price was was great and it arrived promptly. Now I am really enjoying the variety of learning methods such as videos, exciting games and intriguing stories. I particularly like the Vocabulous and the Pronunciation Feedback and Analysis feature. Dutch is very difficult to pronounce and this feature really helps with rolling "r"s. I recommend this to everyone.
Rating:
Summary: What a relief!
Review: I had to brush up on my French for my Ph.D. language proficiency exams. I was dreading the whole thing until someone gave me a copy of FrenchNow! The program was easy to install, easy to use, very enjoyable and, most importantly, very effective. Within a few weeks, I found all of that French I'd forgotten after high school coming back. I've tried other language software in the past, but none of it has been as engrossing or as effective as this.
Rating: 
Summary: Not so much a beginner.
Review: My father bought this program for me a few days ago, and I started to use it and I can't say I'm impressed or unimpressed. It is a good product but not the best. If your like me who language is a hard deal to learn, and want to learn everything so you can speak fluently in a short time, this maybe not be your best buy. You start off by saying, 'these are your friends' or 'they are her friends' but what happened to just learning the basics like the plurals themselfs then already putting them into sentances. I wanted to learn grammer not by their handy dandy notebook, which is by the way better orginized than any book, but why can't I have games along with it? It might be good for advance or intermediate, since it starts right to the sentances. But who doesn't even know the alphabet? It took me three days to learn it, three more days to learn the sounds of each of them. I bet if they included a alphabet game it would have taken learning that easier. I can't say I'm thrilled about this product. I'm still using since I can learn some phrases to talk, but if you want to make up your own sentances to describe yourself, skip this, get a dictonary, and any book that is right for you since everyone is different in learning. Even though I am not that impressed, I am continuing to use it and hopefully I can learn some fundmental russian like 'there is the toliet', and 'where is red square'.
Rating: 
Summary: Advance Level
Review: Wow, this package is really hard. If you are a beginner, stay away. This package is a lot harder than Ultimate Mandarin. I consider myself intermediate, but this package blew me away. Anyway, other package like Rosetta stone chinese is pretty .... VocabuLearn is also a lot .... This package has tons of vocabulary which is much better than VocabuLearn Chinese. This package is much better than in a chinese classroom because you can listen one word by one word for pronunciation. Anyway, ChineseNow is very similar to a classroom experience, except that their vocabularies and sentences are very very difficult. If transparentlanguage company uses easy vocabularies with the same effort, I think they will be much more successful. Why? Because in ChineseNow, they worked very hard and put a lot of effort in producing this CD, but I just think that they are targetting the wrong audience. For me, after one year of Conversation Mandarin, I am starting on Ultimate Mandarin which this will cost me another year. Then, I will attack this ChineseNow CD again. This ChineseNow is one serious material, just too hard...
Rating:
Summary: Nice once you get used to it.
Review: This software is not as bad as other reviewers have said. It might be a little difficult for a complete beginner to get started with but certainly not impossible. The interface takes a little getting used to but it's not that bad. I figured it out without using any help files. It may not be the most dazzling and exciting Spanish software available, but there is a large amount of info in it and it's worth the money. I don't know if I'll ever learn everything that is in this package.
Rating:
Summary: Well worth the price.
Review: I have found the Russian Now program to be an excellent resource for learning Russian. It is especially useful when used in conjunction with other resources. I have found it most useful to use this program as my main resource and use two or three other publications as reinforcement. For the complete beginner, it is an excellent resource for learning the Russian alphabet and pronunciation. The program gives you an opportunity to listen to either individual words or complete sentences from a selected title. After that, you can record your pronunciation and analyze your speech against a native speaker. There are also several different word games with varying levels of difficulty that accompany each title. You can use whatever features of the program that best suit you. There are also grammar resources, but they are not that intuitive. They are about the equivalent of reading a text book on the subject. The largest drawback to the program is the lack of truly beginner titles. This is probably the reason that I see the need for reinforcing material. Overall, though, it is an excellent program and definitely worth the price that is charged for it.
Rating:
Summary: The best software on the market
Review: For a beginner, this might be a bit imposing. I would suggest the beginner use a simple, structured exercise book in conjunction with this, as this program isn't structured at all. The intermediate or advanced speaker can dive right in, although I'd suggest getting some of the add-ons, as well. I haven't seen them on Amazon yet, but you can get them from this company directly. You can go through great works of literature or television segments or travelogues to build comprehension, vocabulary, etc. I'd also recommend this company's WordAce, which is a talking dictionary, but also contains grammar and synonym quizzes. Great fun. There are a couple of minor glitches to be ironed out still. Occasionally the software seems to get stuck on a word and you'll have to cancel out of a quiz and restart, but overall, I couldn't be happier with the software.
Rating:
Summary: Pretty good stuff for the price
Review: I picked up version 8 of this at a store. The box said it works with Mac OS 8 and up, but did not specify OS X. I was pleasantly surprised to see that it was a native application (carbonised) for OS X, so I did not have to run it inside of the Classic environment, like I do with a couple other chinese apps I have. So that is one big plus for it. I find that it is a very good supplement to my college text book and other chinese apps. No one app (or book) can be the best at everything, but this comes pretty close. Not great at learning characters, the strength was in learning PinYin and vocabulary. This is version 8.1 I'm talking about, not version 9.
Rating:
Summary: Not very helpful
Review: I gave this program a fair shake, and overall I'm quite unimpressed. One of the program's key features in my book is the ability to say a word and have it judge you based on sound, pitch, etc. Great in theory, but imagine my surprise when I found out I could say anything at all, such as "Cheeto" and still get a perfect score so long as I mimicked the speaker even a little. This program also does very little to teach grammar rules. Basically, if you already know some Japanese and you're just looking for a vocab builder, it might be worth getting it cheap. You can cheat the speech system, but if you really do try and read the graphs, you can tell if you're actually getting it right or not. It's a sub par tool, but a tool none the less.
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