Learn Spanish Now! 9.0

Rating:
Summary: Simply an excellent program
Review: This is a great program. Previously I bought another Russian language software program and it was pitiful compared with this one. Anywhere in this program you can right-click on a Russian word and bring up its grammar characteristics. An example might be (noun, feminine, 1st conjugation, possesive case). This is important to know when you are learning what ending a word needs based on that information. You can also hear words pronounced by Russian speakers at full speed or half speed and have the word repeated as many times as needed to imitate it. The only things this program lacks are a dictionary (you can download a free Russian/English, English/Russian dictionary off the internet from Russlang) and a "back" button to go to a previous training sentence. You can tell the program to go to a specific sentence and word (i.e. sentence #202, word #5), but without a printed-out sheet of all sentences how are you to know what sentence #202 says? Even so this is an amazing product and a great deal of work obviously went into developing it and it shows. One piece of advise though. You should also buy a good Russian language textbook to complement this program. Either one without the other will eventually leave you confused somewhere down the line. Just be aware that Russian is a complex language and the more reference tools you have at you side, the easier it will be. I have 3 books and often must read the same topic in all 3 to fully understand it. I give this product 2 thumbs up. If your local library has the book/tape series "Modern Russian 1" printed by the Georgetown University Press. I highly recommend you check out the book for a few weeks. It is a great reference tool. ...

Rating:
Summary: Nice, but not my style...
Review: I find this system too confusing for me. The explanations of the cases are too mind boggling for me to understand what it is that they are talking about. The voice part of the software is nice, however, it's definitely unreliable when it comes to telling you how well you are at pronouncing a word. I should know; just for fun, I said a word in english and it gave me a WOW for my "russian" pronunciation. What a joke! The movie "The Adventures of John Stevenson," although incredibly entertaining and fun to watch, didn't do a thing when it came to teaching me the language. I'm more of a visual learner and I prefer to be taught a language through pictures. This system just didn't help me at all.

Rating:
Summary: Good way to learn Chinese
Review: This is an amazing software.
I can enhance my vocabruary and correct my pronounciation through recording my voice and compare with the native pronounciatin on the PC. This is very helpful to learn new language. And also, my version came with bonus CD which includes multiple languages word processor.
Considering the price, this has very high cost performance and I strongly recommend this software to lean Chinese.

Rating:
Summary: Great New Product!
Review: I received my copy of this new product today. First impression is very positive. I have bought most all the CD-based products for German and this one is way ahead of the rest. For my money, the others are toys with no depth at all. What makes this one effective for language learning is a design and technology that makes use of concurrent inputs: sound,text,and visuals. And these three sensory inputs can be slowed down and/or repeated as desired. It's not perfect, but it is clearly better than the rest.For this reason, I give it a 'relative' rating of 5.

Rating:
Summary: Very nice program
Review: A good thing about this program is that it introduces you to the alphabet, pronouncing the letter sounds and the letter names themselves. Too bad they don't have that feature for numbers or counting. For that, you'd have to look them up or happen upon each number during dialog lessons.
I wouldn't completely rely on the 'Advanced Speech Analysis' feature in helping with one's accent, which basically has an arrow which points to one of three areas depending on one's accent ability: Keep Practicing, Good, and WOW. Though, it still is nice that I can play my voice back to back to back with the native speaker, determining how I need to improve myself. One doesn't need a meter for that.
The program will also allow one to type Russian characters and letters on a standard English keyboard. Nothing has to be reprogramed for it to type Russian.
The program also exercises listening comprehension along with the reading and writing. They have a dictation game, in which one will hear a Russian native speaker dictating sentences and the player will, in turn, type it in Russian.
The grammar tutorial is also very nice, giving you lessons in conjugation, etc., as well as a short but interesting history of the Russian language itself.
They have these dialogs for several situations that gives you examples of how words are used. They give you over ten-thousand words, all right. They're not made up into vocabulary lists, however. Instead it's made up of every single word for every single sentence in every single piece of dialog in the dialog sections.
Also included is a multilingual word processor, so one can type in their new language outside of the "Russian Now" program.
The only thing I don't like (and is the reason I knocked off a star) is the fact that it is a bit difficult to navigate through. One could get lost without a way to get back to where they started.

Rating:
Summary: For Intermediate Conversational French
Review: I really enjoy using this program and I highly recommend it. This program has very good conversational skill levels. You practice speaking and it rates your pronunciation. It helps you to improve your listening skills as well. It has word games, grammar tools and vocabulary building. The real life videos are average. However, it would be difficult to use this program unless you have learned some grammar. I recommend this program to all intermediate french learners.

Rating:
Summary: Worth the [Buy!!!]
Review: I was skeptical at first, but once I got to using Spanish Now I was very impressed. I decided to buy this because I was taking a trip to South America(where a great deal of the population speaks Spanish) and needed to practice Spanish for the trip. I hadn't taken any Spanish classes since college so I was quite rusty but this program helped me a lot. I was able to dive right in and review vocabulary, practice conversations for various situations, work on my pronunciation, learn grammar, ect. I was very impressed with the great amount of depth offered making this program ideal for begineers or more advanced speakers. Spanish Now also makes great use of available technology by integrating video and audio together in various parts of the program which effectively adds some realism. My impression of this product is that it is well worth the buy leading me to give it the 5 star rating it deserves.

Rating:
Summary: Best used as addition to other programs
Review: The good side of this program is that you can click on each word separately to hear it pronounced slowly and then you can click on the entire sentence to hear it spoken at a normal speed.

After going through the section with some essential words and phrases, there is a leap to dialogues and also to the language which moves to intermediate / advanced level. If you already speak Spanish, but your Spanish got a little bit rusty, this may be a fun way to review it. If you're just beginning to learn Spanish, this may be frustrating and you will need to supplement this program with other more solid books both related to language and grammar.

On a side note, Transparent Language has additional CDs as add-ons to this program, which as far as I know are only available through their website. Add-ons deal with different applications of language - for business, travel, entertainment, literature, etc. There is a CD with a movie and it's old, old, old and not all that engaging. You may be better off just getting regular DVDs with Spanish tracks (the translations may be sometimes off, but it's much cheaper way to get used to spoken language). The only benefit of these add-ons is that you can click on each word separately to hear it first pronounced slowly as many times as you need to and then listen to the entire sentence or entire segment.



Rating:
Summary: 3 Maybe Even 4 Stars
Review: Personally, I thought this software wasn't bad. I think some of the reviewers here expected that this software was a tool in itself to learn Spanish. I know that's what the title Learn Spanish Now implies. But I think to get the best use of this software you need to use it in addition to a comprehensive Spanish course (not instead of a comprehensive Spanish course). Whether it's FSI, Learning Spanish Like Crazy or Pimsleur Spanish. My personal choice to use with Learn Spanish Now is Learning Spanish Like Crazy. The method that they use for verb conjugation in Learning Spanish Like Crazy is unbeatable. I felt that the vocabulary in FSI was archaic. Pimsleur good but more vocabulary required. But no matter which one you chose to use with this course, if you want to get the most for your money, you will need a more comprehensive learning Spanish tool to go along with Learn Spanish Now.

Rating:
Summary: GREAT FOR IMPROVING SPANISH PRONUNCIATION
Review: I like this program for its onboard pronunciation section available in almost all parts of the program. While wearing headphones with a microphone, one can hear a native speaker say a word or phrase, say it yourself, and have it immediately compared with a graphic display and analog meter for pronunciation accuracy. It's really great. One may also repeat the native speaker, your own voice, and the native speaker again. Great for self comparison. There are both male and female native speakers.
Immediate definition and part of speech for any word clicked on, phrase translation, the ability to have the native speaker say the phrase at normal speed or slowly as many times as one wants, and interesting facts about the language included in the practice essays are several other goodies.
I would like to see an on board dictionary. One should have a good understanding of parts of speech before beginning. A standard Spanish language textbook to facilitate learning grammar may be helpful with this program.