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Learn Russian Now! 9.0

Learn Russian Now! 9.0

List Price: $39.99
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Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Save your Money!
Review: I made an honest attempt to figure this software out and found it very frustrating. This CD is hard to navigate. The problem I had was there really is no structure to it, so moving from one level of understanding to the next is impossible. Try another one and don't waste your time and money..........MTT

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: A little advanced. I needed something basic.
Review: I felt intimidated using this program. I have only a limited study of Spanish. I took Spanish one year in high school a decade ago. I need something to give me basic vocabulary and simple sentences, to begin with. This program is great if you need help with pronounciation and further study of the language.

It gives wonderful situations and survival phrases. In the sentences you can click on any word and it gives the meaning, the root verb ( if that applies), you can have the program pronounce the word for you.

It doesn't have a dictionary though. You have to buy another program to go with it for that. I was very disappointed about that.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Don't Believe the Hype...
Review: I just purchased both The Learning Channel's "Learn to Speak 8.1" and Transparent Language's "Spanish Now! v9." I can tell you, first hand, that TLC's product is at least twice as good. I assumed that the higher priced (Spanish Now!)of the two would be a better product. WRONG! This software has a poor user interface, in addition, it doesn't guide the user through the process of learning the language. Save your money and get TLC's CD.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Very helpful.
Review: 1. You can click and hear almost all the French words in this software. And it shows the meaning of the word and a little bit of grammar at the same time too.

2. The pronounciation is very clear.

3. Adequate and very good convasation and listening sourse.

4. Lots of activities to keep you learning- and they are all interesting!

5. BUT not enough grammars..

If you are bigginer with no French grammars, this software can be a bit hard.
But overall, this software is the best language learning software I've ever used and I strongly recommend it.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Very Very Good
Review: This is probably the best language skill software ever! That is all I can say

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Nice course
Review: Once installed, at first looks, you may start to wonder as to where is all the vocabulary. But believe me as soon as you go into the individual modules, you will find all the vocabulary. And things like the screen saver help a lot too. Just watching the screen saver I have found so many new words and sentences even. Definitely much better than most courses. I was planning on going to a school for French but seems that now I don't need it :)

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Listen russian until your jaw drops.
Review: I approached the russian language under two very different methods: this ultra modern CD-ROM and the old fashioned printed course, a.k.a. book. I am sorry to say that the Learn Russian Now! CD ROM, although impressive and nice, is not definitely the ideal tool for beginners. Someone will probably enjoy this CDROM if he is nearly an expert in russian language and wants to practice conversation and hearing skills. For the beginner, it can be frightening. Open the course and the first suggested section will take you to an intimidating 4 minute dialogue in russian which is supposed to be your first lesson using basic russian structures... basic for whom? Then, you are supposed to review what you just saw. Nice. Lessons are organized thematically (restaurants, how to catch a cab, around Saint Petesburg, etc.) and not by level of difficulty or expertise, so each one of them combines every imaginable verb tense (present, past, future, etc.) and language structure. This means lenghty monologues with incomprehensible russian chatter until your jaw drops or you turn off the computer. I simply could not learn russian using this method, only memorize some useful phrases, but that does NOT mean you are learning the languague.

Then I swtiched to the printed, step-by-step, old fashoned book (New Penguin Russian course VERY recommended!) and I'm glad I did. After dedicating one hour every other day to study my book, I am speaking russian after two months... and practicing online with russian friends :)

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Excellent lessons - Mac users beware
Review: This suite of software is very easy to use. You can listen to conversations, participate in conversations, slow things down to hear pronunciation more clearly, etc etc. Loaded with features that I don't use, because even just the basic feature set is enough to get you going.

However, Mac users beware. This is *not* version 9; it's version 8.1. Transparent Language used to have a big notice about the differences between Mac and Windows versions for this release, but that notice seems to have disappeared, so I thought that this was finally the *real* version 9. Not so. Granted, it does run natively on OS X now, which was worth the purchase to me, but does not have the new features of version 9 for Windows.

Overall very good product. I can't go into too much detail about the features, because I haven't needed them; the software does a good job without complicating things, but offers extra features for those that will use them.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: A good addition to your arsenal
Review: I like this program. It should not be the only aid used in learning Japanese, though. It DID help my pronounciation a bit. You can hide the translation boxes to see what you do or don't understand while the program plays.

This program does NOT use Japanese syllabry; it uses Romaji instead. When playing the games or quizes you have to spell romaji correctly. I wa never good at the type of romaji they use (ie I prefer to use "o-" rather than "oo"). It has a characture chart, but there are better ways to learn Hiragana and Katakana.

All the dialogs are good, though. They do not teach grammer, or explain verb conjugation. For these reasons, it is best to be studying another way and use this program as a passive review, or practice.

...AGAIN, use his to supplement your studies only.

Rating: 5 stars
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.


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