Learn Russian 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: Completely Unusable
Review: For all I know, this might be the best Russian language program ever invented. But I'll never know it--I could not for the life of me figure out how to use this software. There was no instruction booklet, and when I opened the program, I simply had no idea what to do. I clicked on an icon or two, and my computer started jabbering at me in Russian. I didn't have the foggiest idea what the program wanted me to do--repeat, type something, or whatever. It was completely unusable.

Lest anyone think I'm computer illiterate, I'm a 28-year-old doctoral student who was using gopher and mosaic to surf the Internet before Netscape Navigator existed and long before this website was even a twinkle in Jeff Bezos's eye.

Purchase at your own risk.

Rating:
Summary: Not terrible, but definitely not good.
Review: Not terribly expensive, but still not worth it. The Rosetta Stone software is far superior, albeit costly. If you're on a budget and MUST have software and are willing to put up with a klunky interface and poor quality, buy this. Otherwise, save your money.

Rating:
Summary: Effective Learning Tool.
Review: This product, Russian Now V9 by Transparent Language, is great for language learning. Being able to hear the words pronounced greatly enhances ones ability to correctly learn the right way to speak Russian. Russian Now emphasizes the important language skills of listening, speaking, reading & writing and vocabulary & grammar. The games are excellent and help to provide good practice. The product provides a CD interactive learning experience. Adding to this is Transparent Language's free web-based learning resource that will support and expand your learning. Overall, this is a well put together and useful learning tool.