Rating: 
Summary: Very useful way to practice German
Review: German Now! 9 is an excellent way to improve your German. There is plenty of variety in this program. Listen to conversations, speak and have your pronunciation graded, and of course plenty of exercises. There are only a few minor quibs I have: The sound quality could have been a bit better. There is noticable static in parts. The acting for the video segments is mediocre. I normally wouldn't care, but occasionally the actors looked a little nervous and it distracted me. The speech analysis in this program is excellent. In addition to just a rating, you can see graphs of aspects of your speech (vowels, frictives, pitch) so you get an idea of what you specifically need to improve. My only comment is that you'll need (or at least I needed) a high quality microphone to get the most out of the speech analysis. When I recorded my voice with several different[...] mics, there was just too much static. Have fun, that's the best way to learn any language.
Rating: 
Summary: Disappointed
Review: I started knowing no German, but because of recent work assignment, need to develop basic conversational and written skills. I did a reasonably thorough investigation of PC-based learning packages, but was only able to demo one fairly expensive option. Being frugal, I went with this lower cost alternative. I am disappointed in the product for the following reasons:
- There is not an obvious starting point and not an obvious lesson sequence. The opening window is a video of a conversation. Although labeled Beginner, it is far beyond where a new learner would be at. I suspect it was done to show off the "multimedia" features as the first impression.
- The content is not organized in lessons. It's like using a dictionary and phrase book to teach yourself.
- The various References Tools have different user interfaces - suggesting this is an aggregation of completely different products. I was expecting a carefully designed and packaged product aimed at helping me learn German. This looks like a quick effort to put together some multimedia sequences with translation, bundled with a few references. It is not a learning environment. So, I recommend avoiding this product. I'm going to look at some other lower cost alternatives, but if I don't find anything suitable, I'm going to either find a German friend to help me learn, or bite the bullet and get the expensive solution.
Rating: 
Summary: From a German
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.
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