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Business And Office Categories |
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| Learn Russian Now! 8.0 |
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The Devil Is In The Detail
There are things about this CD-ROM (and the main language course IS in fact just CD) that I love and things I absolutely hate.What I hate about it: it crashes much too often (on my Danish version of Win98, 2nd ed), it doesnt really make it easy for me to monitor my progress or know where to start, it feels like a product that was rushed through the final phases of production, the help system sucks (the sentence "soon youll accomplish youre goals" in a language course(!) demonstrates one of the problems), a million things really. What I love about it: spending time working with this is actually fun and the fact that you can listen to the pronunciation of sentences and individual words, look up words and move back and forth by clicking with your mouse (or using the keyboard if you learn the shortcuts) makes this much more enjoyable than an audio CD or cassette based course. With the above reservations, I recommend it as a supplement to a more traditional course, eg. "The New Penguin Russian Course For Beginners" and would definitely give it 4 stars if it would just crash a bit less frequently!
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Every silver lining has a cloud!
The first, and by far the most unpleasant, shock related to purchasing this product is that what you see is not necessarily what you get. Depending on your supplier (and it must be stressed that Amazon are not guilty of this) you may be enticed into purchasing this title as a 3 CD Box Set. Dont be fooled! This set consists of only two CDs of which just one is dedicated to learning the Russian language through interactive means. The other CD provides grammar-support software and a Russian typing programme which, whilst useful, are unlikely to be the main reason that any prospective customer would part with their hard earned cash.
As for the ONE interactive learning CD, this has both favourable and less favourable aspects. Having installed the CD the user is offered the choice of two teaching methods: either the Total Immersion technique or the Step-by-Step approach. Despite repeatedly referring to the Help File I was unable to find any difference between the two. The method(s) are based on a story line in which the main characters are intially introduced and subsequently followed through a series of day-to-day scenarios with new words and grammar being introduced prior to each of the ten sections. On the plus side is the interactive nature of the teaching process. It is possible to listen to operator-selected words or phrases spoken by a native Russian linguist, easily create your own Words List for those words or phrases that just wont stick (which unfortunately for me is the majority!) or accurately and clearly compare your own pronunciation of words/phrases with that of a native. Less positively, these excellent facilities would benefit greatly from a more user-friendly presentation style and a significantly improved Help File (which in itself dates from the ZX-81 era and is not what one would expect from a piece of modern interactive software).
In summary this CD may best be considered as a useful tool for reinforcing lessons learned by other means. It is definitely NOT a course for complete beginners as it lacks any introduction to the Cyrillic alphabet or Russian pronunciation. As a stand-alone CD I would have awarded it a cautious 3 stars however, in view of the fact that the purchaser effectively gains only one truly useful CD for.. a princely sum, the poor value for money demotes this course still further. A rather paltry 2 stars awarded - could do better!
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Smart Start Japanese & Dictionary
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The most useful part of the software was the simple games to help learn hiragana and katakana. After playing the games for a few hours, I was able to read these Japanese characters without making mistakes. The simple games are also useful for learning simple vocabulary.
It wont get you to any gre..
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French Experience
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The BBCs French Experience is an extremely comprehensive two-CD-ROM language learning course for beginners, and should soon have you speaking French with ease. This multimedia course is neatly broken into sections and combines video and audio learning techniques. An inbuilt audio test makes sure all system requirements are met and equipment is working and ready for you to begin--its then up to the user to determine how much to cover each session. After an introduction covering the basi..
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Talk Now! Learn German
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If you know lots of languages such as Malay, Croatian, Russian, Tibetan, Vietnamese... etc. and want to know the German equivalent of their very simple words and phrases, then this software is ideal for you.
Otherwise, if you thought that this was intended for serious study of German, then look f..
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Talk Now! Learn Spanish
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i have just brought this talk spanish cd rom,i have found it fun to use with easy or hard games to play, i have never tried anything like this before, but it is great for any age and any level......
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Multimedia Spanish
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The blurb on this softwares case claims that the CD-ROM is suitable for adults as well as kids, but the cartoon characters and the scenarios in which they live make it clear that its far better for the young. The package is fun, and will certainly keep children amused for a good while. Most of the basics of Spanish are adequately covered. The emphasis is on speaking and understanding. At times, however, the environment takes over the fundamental (if tedious) importance of syntax. Take, for ex..
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