Rating: 
Summary: Excellent
Review: Chinese Now is an excellent program for language learning. I am more than satisfied by its effetiveness and what it has to offer as a product. I found that it has very few flaws and is for all ability level speakers. Chinese is a hard language to learn and so far this program is the best method I have found for myself. Its a 5-star program and a good buy!
Rating:
Summary: What an amazing Tool
Review: Hi I'm an English teacher who teaches English as a Second Language (ESL) to students in China. Before starting this job I took a Madarin Chinese class and found it very hard. I got this program and using it helped me immensly. I was able to put into practice what I learned in class through this program. This provided excellent practice in pronunciation and contains a very large vocabulary section. The games and media were very good tools to practice and learn with, especially Vocabulous, my favorite game. After the class, when I was in China, I still used this program to help keep my language skills sharp and to expand my knowledge of it. Chinese Now is a very good learning program and it works.
Rating: 
Summary: Not so great
Review: I bought this CDROM after I read all the good reviews here.
In my opinion, the method is not that effective.
And it is not thorough since the Chinese caracters are simply ignored.
Maybe the best way to use it is as a secondary source of training, but not more.
Further, like all the CDROM based language method I have tried, the overall design is outdated. But again, this is not specific to LearnChineseNow9.0.
Rating:
Summary: WOW
Review: I bought this program to learn Dutch because my ancestors were from the Netherlands so I had a general intrest in learing the language. To my surprise this program exceeded my expectations ten fold and has helped me on my way to learning the Dutch Language. Dutch Now teaches all the necessary skills to learning a language - Listening, Speaking, Reading & Writing, Vocabulary & Grammar. It does each of these in multiple ways which all seem to be effective. I really appreciated the conversation practices which are available for many different situations making this feature very useful for travel at the least. Technology wise this program makes good use of it with Advanced Speech Analysis and full motion video. Dutch Now most definitely deserves the 5 star rating.
Rating:
Summary: Best Italian Software
Review: I found Italian Now to be quite good for learning the Italian language. It gives you the ability to start almost anywhere making it ideal for beginners through experts. Being a beginner when I bought this program I started with the alphabet reference and a grammar tutorial. These were both very good features and after some practice they helped to lay a good foundation for further learning. From here there are endless things to do. This program does an excellent job of teaching vocabulary and useful phrases. Perhaps one of the best things this program does is working on your pronunciation. In several different activities I had to speak Italian into a microphone and it was compared to a native speaker's pronunciation which helps you to drastically improve your own pronunciation. I am more than satisfied with this program and I highly recomend it.
Rating:
Summary: Best for the Price
Review: I have struggled through several introductory chinese language products, and to date this has been the most useful for conversational development. It is not a full integrated course, in that it is conversation and pinyin, but even my Chinese friends consider that a good beginning. It has an amazing collection of learning methods in an inexpensive package. Chinese is extremely difficult to start. It has taken me many hours to get get down the most basic phrases. I found this, along with the Pimsleur programs to be the most helpful.
Rating: 
Summary: not for everyone but i thought it was great
Review: I have used several LanguageNow courses and I like them. However, reviews for these courses seem to be all over the place, so I thought it might be helpful to describe what they are and what they aren't. The CD always has at least four parts. 1)The first section teaches common words in sample sentences and dialogues. 2)The second section teaches survival phrases. 3) Other sections are monologues on travel and culture, or are stories full of dialogues. These sections are more difficult than the first two. Everything you hear is written on the screen. You can stop and start anyplace and at any time. You can listen to one sentence a hundred times if you want. You can listen to a slowed down version. You can click on a word at any time for a translation into English. When ready, you can go to the games section and practice what you have learned. I really like the games section, as it really reinforces what I am learning without wearing me out. Beware! The courses don't teach grammar, but they still work well if you buy a simple grammar reference. The courses do teach vocabulary, and how to speak and listen. I know several languages and find that I learn more quickly if I focus on communication and just check on a grammar point now and then. This company also has "add-on-titles" which are good if you want to become near fluent even without much real life practice. If you are a complete beginner, you might find these courses frustrating. If you have some background or know a related language, these courses really work well.
Rating:
Summary: Advance Level
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: Terrible, terrible software!
Review: I really have a hard time understanding how this line of language software has a 4 star rating on Amazon! I found the program to be far too complicated and intimidating for beginners like myself, and there was no section on the fundamentals of the language, and that's a pretty important section to have. When I tried to find out what certain characters meant, or even how they were pronounced, I found only a poorly made jpeg with the name of some 20 random characters. The dialogue sequences themselves were well written, but a good language program needs more than poorly recorded dialogue sequences to successfully teach any language, and the voices were very poor, as they sounded as if they were recorded using a prepackaged cheap-o microphone (I wouldn't be surprised if that was true). I'd have a hard time recommending this to anyone; even those who wish to brush up on their mandarin! Shame on these people for peddling such a faulty product!
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.
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