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Rating: 
Summary: Useless, and frequently pathetic.
Review: For starters, all the content offered would have easily fit on a single CD-ROM, so their offering so many disks reminds of bogus language courses from the past which had 30 or so cassettes or videocassetes, each with about 10 minutes or so of playback. Each area of the course is essentially worthless. To just describe one disk, the vocabulary disk has about 2,000 or so words almost randomly chosen. Very few of the essential words of the language appear, and instead hundreds of terms deal with country names and things you don't need to know your first days, such as cufflinks and redcurrant.It is true that pictures and videos help remember words, but the images are thoroughly depressing and pathetic on many ocassions. For example, the woman in the "kiss" term looks like she is doing so forcibly, and in general any picture or video (one in about 30 definitions has a 2 or 3 second video) in which people of any age appear seem to either have a great dislike for the photographer, or for life in general. It is rather disturbing to see such suffering when one is trying to learn a new language. The other disks are even more worthless, and everything has a depressing quality to it. Needless to say, I sent it back, and will instead try another product. I recommend staying far away from this one!
Rating: 
Summary: Very good for building basic communication skills.
Review: I am very impressed with this software program. There's a feature where you speak into a microphone some text on screen and it'll tell you if it didn't understand you, and which words specifically you had trouble with. The 3 audio CDs are also helpful for listening in your car to become as immersed as possible in German. Mind you- I don't see someone becoming fully fluent in German with this product, but it's definitely a good tool to give yourself some ground knowledge to build from if you were to eventually take a more advanced course or just to travel lightly in Europe. I'd definitely recommend this and the other language versions.
Rating:
Summary: Not for Beginners
Review: I bought this product thinking I could, as a beginner, learn to speak German. Ha, was I wrong. Maybe if I had had a year of German in school I would have found this useful. If you are a true beginner with no knowledge of the German language then this product is not for you; it is missing the basic fundamentals needed for a beginner. If you have a year or so of traditional German you might find it helpful, at least you have the absolute basics to work with. Beginners beware.
Rating:
Summary: Super program!
Review: I'm a Spanish and Chinese teacher who has decided to learn German. I received this set for Xmas, and I love it! The lessons are well presented with a variety of activities that help you work on all four aspects of language learning--reading, writing, listening, and speaking--with an emphasis on listening and speaking skills. It has a variety of activities to help you learn, and you can spend a lot of time on favorite activities--I love the crossword puzzles for vocabulary development. The input is generally comprehensible, and unlike other reviewers, I find that there is more than enough material to keep me busy for many many hours. The only shortcoming of the program is the somewhat inaccessible dictionary--I would suggest you buy your own German-English dictionary for convenience. I plan to recommend the Spanish version of this program to my students who are having trouble in class.
Rating:
Summary: Super program!
Review: I'm a Spanish and Chinese teacher who has decided to learn German. I received this set for Xmas, and I love it! The lessons are well presented with a variety of activities that help you work on all four aspects of language learning--reading, writing, listening, and speaking--with an emphasis on listening and speaking skills. It has a variety of activities to help you learn, and you can spend a lot of time on favorite activities--I love the crossword puzzles for vocabulary development. The input is generally comprehensible, and unlike other reviewers, I find that there is more than enough material to keep me busy for many many hours. The only shortcoming of the program is the somewhat inaccessible dictionary--I would suggest you buy your own German-English dictionary for convenience. I plan to recommend the Spanish version of this program to my students who are having trouble in class.
Rating:
Summary: Painfull to use
Review: This is one of the worst language programs I have used. The user interface is terrible and there is almost no help available. The help icon is there but is disabled most of the time. The exercises are hard to decode--you can never tell what you need to accomplish. And the help (the few times the icon is enabled) is very generic and almost never applies to what you are doing. Don't let the number of discs fool you--everything could have fit on a single disc.
Save your money and keep looking.
Rating:
Summary: Very well designed!
Review: This software is very complete, with all the skills to learn German involved: speaking, writing, grammar, listening, comprehension... The speaking capabilities is outstanding, as the software recognizes your voice and can correct your pronunciation mistakes. Activities are very interactive and diverse, making it very engaging and fun. I used it a lot, and still the length of the software is amazing. Very well designed!
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