Verbal Advantage: Volume 2

Rating:
Summary: Discover Real Word Power
Review: Do you ever feel that some people are more poised, speak clearer, or are more skilled conversationalists? Do you feel they achieve more due to these skills? It's not your imagination. A powerful vocabulary is key to personal and professional success. Written and read by Charles Harrington Elster, Verbal Advantage has been the top-selling vocabulary program in the world since 1985, and it will help you develop confidence in social and business situations. Volumes 1-6 are full of real word power.

Rating:
Summary: Reading from dictionary
Review: From their advertisement pitch ("a program that feeds words effortlessly into your memory... you'll be able to use hundreds of new words in hours..."), one would think that they'd used some cutting edge psychology techniques (such as NLP, conditioning, etc) to aid your learning. But you'll be disappointed when you discover that the author did little more than reading from the dictionary.

Here's the format for every word on the tape: 1) author reads the vocabulary 2) he spells it 3) reads the definition and sometimes the origin of the word 4) reads the synonyms and sometimes antonyms (which he did not bother to spell. So if you didn't know the synonyms to being with, you can't even look them up in a dictionary) 5) often he gives some example of usage.

With exception of #5 above, there's nothing you can't get from reading the dictionary like Rain Man does. At least, when you read from a dictionary, you don't have to keep rewinding the damn thing to catch the synonyms you missed.

Each verbal advantage set comes with 2 tapes. The author spent half of the 1st tape introducing the program, telling you why you should learn vocabularies. He then spent half of the 2nd tape explaining how to read from a dictionary. Okay, so you say "I don't know why I should learn more words and I never used a dictionary before." You'll be surprised when you open Verbal Advantage level 2, and discovers the EXACT same repetition of the introduction and how to read dictionaries.

You might learn a lot of other things from these tapes... but you definitely will not learn a lot of new words.

Rating:
Summary: Pretty good vocab learning
Review: The author is very excited about his love of vocabulary and a person's vocabulary having an effect on their success. This helps to motivate you along with the host of new words you'll learn. The exercises are good but there could be more of them. Overall, its very informative and a worth the cost.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent Education Value
Review: These tapes are the most interesting educational tapes I have ever listened to. Mr Elster does much more than read from the dictionary. He gives you the correct pronunciation, correct usage, and the etymology of many of the words. The tapes are excellently produced and should be mandatory for all college freshman. If you want to open up a whole new world to yourself listen to these tapes.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent Education Value
Review: These tapes are the most interesting educational tapes I have ever listened to. Mr Elster does much more than read from the dictionary. He gives you the correct pronunciation, correct usage, and the etymology of many of the words. The tapes are excellently produced and should be mandatory for all college freshman. If you want to open up a whole new world to yourself listen to these tapes.