Rocket French Audio Sample – lesson 1

Video Demo and Review of The Rocket French  Textbook and Mega Games

Note: The Rocket language Courses have all been updated recently and so the courses have changed slightly to what I have shown above. While the games themselves are essentially the same, they do now look a lot nicer and the overall look and feel of the package has been improved.

Rocket French | Rocket Spanish | Rocket Chinese | Rocket German |  Rocket Japanese | Rocket Italian | Rocket Korean | Rocket Hindi

Overall

As much as I dislike the quite aggressive sales tactics of the Rocket homepage I have to admit that the whole Rocket French package is excellent value for money, but as well as that, it is actually a very good product. Although the audio course is the main focus here, on its own it is possibly not quite as effective as the Pimsleur audio course. It is, however, a very good product, and does a great job at immersing the student in conversation and keeping it interesting. I actually like the audio course (although I found the guy a little over-enthusiastic at times) and it makes learning easy and fun. Combine that with the mega games (which for me are the biggest surprise package of all) and you have a great all-round product. At a possible download price of $99 it is also great value for money. Probably the best value for money audio course available.

Features

Audio Course

The Rocket language system is centered around the audio courses which concentrate on simple everyday conversations. Each audio file begins with a conversation between a man and a woman in the native language (in this case French) beginning with basic introductions and leading up to more complicated exchanges. The short conversation is then broken down piece-by-piece with the student expected to respond aloud and repeat each given sentence. The young man does all of the talking in English and explains grammar and vocabulary issues as he goes along. In each subsequent lesson the previous vocabulary is read to check you can remember it; if you cannot you are advised to repeat the previous lesson.

Games/ Exercises

The Mega games consist of three parts: Megavocab and Mega audio both ask you to choose the topic to be tested to begin with e.g. places, the weather, shopping etc. Megavocab then gives you a picture and asks you to choose the correct word or phrase to describe it out of a possible 4. Thankfully the meaning of the word is given in English which is often necessary as the pictures can be a little obscure at times, but you can also turn this option off if preferred. Mega audio gives you six pictures with the English description and plays you the spoken word or phrase of your chosen topic and you must choose the correct picture.

The third game is called Megaverbs. In this game you first choose a tense (present, perfect, conditional etc.) and then the computer gives you a verb in its neutral infinitive form (eg. to send) and a personal pronoun (I, he, they etc.). You must then write the correct conjugation of the verb. Each of the three games gives you 4 points for a correct answer and subtracts one for each incorrect guess.

Extras

As well as the audio course and the surprisingly effective games, Rocket also supplies the transcript for every conversation so you can see how words are spelt, and a grammar booklet which gives more information about the topics being covered and the grammar involved. These booklets are full colour and have embedded audio clips so you can hear the words that you are reading about. They also have written exercises to help you become better at the new grammar.

The final added bonus are the Megacards. These are pre-made flash cards for beginner and advanced which you can print out and use to help increae your vocabulary.

Effectiveness

I have to admit when I first looked at Rocket French I was hoping it would be terrible and I would hate it. The website that you order the product from has all the hallmarks of a cheap sales pitch and i was expecting the product to follow suit (or at worst be a complete scam). I have to say though that I was pleasantly surprised: the Rocket French course is professionally done, quite effective in its method, and surprisingly engaging.

Audio course

The audio course alone is of a good standard, but nothing ground-breaking in its approach. Each conversation is useful and relevant and spoken at a good pace—not too slow to appear artificial but just slow enough for a novice to understand. The conversations are then broken down by sentence and by word and the meaning of each is given to show how the grammar in the language is structured. I liked the way the translation is often given literally in the order of the foreign words and then in the English order e.g. “comment vous appelez-vous?” is translated into English as “what is your name?” but the narrator also gives the direct literal translation as ”how do you call yourself?”. I think this is a useful way to understand the sentence structure in French and also to understand the use of the vocabulary.

Students are reminded of past vocabulary and urged to retake lessons to cement learning. Although the audio courses are well done they have no graduated interval recall as such and are therefore less efficient than the Pimsleur course, although with the right self disiciplne for reviewing, a student could learn just as much, if not more, with the Rocket.

Mega Games

These games are fun, addictive and surprisingly effective at helping you use the vocabulary you have learned and advance your knowledge of grammar and language construction. I have to say, out of all the games and added exercises of other programs that i have tried, these were the most fun and probably the most effective. Although this is just a side dish to the main event it has been very well made, and along with the transcript and grammar booklet increase the effectiveness of the whole product

Longevity

Rocket language courses have plenty of hours worth of audio material and if you buy the extended package you get even more. These audio courses even when finished can be reviewed at your leisure, but even still, they do have a limited shelf life and can only take you so far, as any audio course can. However, the added Mega games and the grammar workbooks mean that your grasp of vocabulary and grammar can be extended even when the audio courses have been exhausted. For this reason i think that Rocket language has very useful length of service possibilities in anyone’s collection.

Ease of Use

There is certainly nothing difficult about Rocket language courses. The audio courses are simple to play—the instructions for everything are given by the hosts—and of course they can be used in a car stereo or an ipod (as long as you are comfortable speaking words aloud). The Software for the games is no more complicated. It is easy to load, and easy to navigate and play each game. The instructions are straight forward and easy to follow and the Megavocab game even has a vocab creator so you can customise the game to your requirements.

Cost

Cost is probably the biggest plus for Rocket languages. The fact that the downloadable files are priced at least half the cost of its competitors gives Rocket a definite advantage in the value for money stakes.

Free
Another Benefit of Rocket is that you can try it for free before you buy. Give them your e-mail address and they will send you the first 3 lessons of the course for free over 6 days. Sure they will probably send you follow up sales letters for the rest of your life (or until you unsubscribe anyway) but it’s free, and what better way to get a taste before you fork out your cash.

Video Review of Onlingo

System

The Onlingo company sells their products through their website as initial free trials. The company claims to allow customers to sample their product for free while only paying $6.95 for postage and packing leaving the customer full rights to cancel the trial at any time and return the goods. Good idea in principle.

Unfortunately, everything believable that I have read says that it is virtually impossible to cancel the trial once the company has deducted the postage and packing from your creditcard/paypal account. In fact, a great number of people claim to have received further Onlingo products each month at an automatically deducted cost of $79.95 per month.

As well as apparently being an extremely substandard product, many people are being forced to cancel credit cards and paypal accounts simply because onlingo will not cancel their ‘membership’, and the small print states that once you are a member you will continue to pay monthly subscriptions forever.

The customer service line is apparently extremely difficult to get hold of, and even if you do get a real person to talk to, it can not be guaranteed that they will help you. This must be extremely lucrative for Onlingo, because even if customers manage to cancel eventually, the company will probably get a few months worth of $79.95 per month for several months for thousands of customers with very little outlay for some cheap CDs.

There are many websites giving excellent reviews for Onlingo. You should be very wary of these sites as they will have a vested interest in selling as many Onlingo courses as possible. The Onlingo company pays affiliate sites $25.00 for every person that signs up for a free trial and is charged the $6.95 postage and packing. The very fact that they are willing to do this implies that either they are extremely confident in the quality of their product, or they know customers will have to pay for at least a couple of months.

There are also testimonies of customers stating that Onlingo started to charge small ‘miscellaneous’ amounts on credit cards or paypal accounts every few days. These have occasionally risen to be as frequent as every day.

if you need more information, please do not take only my word for it, search the net and look at the respected complaint sites where customers have lodged their grievances.

In a nutshell – Beware of Onlingo and its products. They are not suppliers of quality language products, they are a ‘company of shady businessmen out to make a quick buck’.

Disclaimer: The above is in no way the opinion of Lingualogue or based on the experience of Lingualogue. The above is my interpretation and rewording of other (real) customers’ complaints and experiences of Onlingo’s product and their service towards their customers. The ideas mentioned above can be verified in many accounts on many different websites. Visitors to Lingualogue should understand that the above has been posted as a warning only and does not constitute Lingualogue’s position on the Onlingo company, its employees, its partners or its product.

The first thing you have to do at the main screen is choose a title. My japanese program had 4 initial titles: ‘Japan:The island empire’, ‘Essential Japanese signs’, ‘Survival phrases for Japanese’, and ‘the most common words in japanese’. Each of these titles opens its selected page in a dialogue window. The first title opens a narrative about the history of Japan written in Roma-ji (Japanese sounds written in Roman Alphabet) which can be heard spoken aloud, and the meaning of each word or sentence seen by clicking. Each title opens a similarly made page – information in Roma-ji both written and spoken, with English meanings available for individual words or whole phrases along with whether the word is a noun or a verb etc and what the root Japanese word is.

Other choices on the main page are games, listen and speak, or conversation practice.

The listen and speak section plays individual words or phrases from the selected title and asks you to repeatthem into the microphone, grading your performance on its meter, with grades of ‘Wow,’ ‘good job,’ or ‘keep practicing’.

The conversation practice provides you with a situation on a picture or video with someone asking a question. The question is spoken aloud and you must respond with an answer. The computer helps you find the answer if you are unsure and gives hints and the meaning in english before giving the whole answer away in japanese.

The games are standard fare of crosswords, gapfill, and sentence reordering.

Effectiveness

The best part of this course, for me, is the conversation practice. It allows you to practice different vocabulary for different situations and will give you as much or as little help as you need. It begins with someone asking you a question, for example: in a train station someone will ask you what time the next train is in Japanese. You must give the correct response into the microphone. There are several options that you can toggle on or off that can make answering easier: you can choose whether or not to see the conversation text in Roma-ji (trabsliterated Japanese), receive a prompt or the actual translation of your answer (in English), or your expected response in Roma-ji. This is a useful and quite engaging exercise, as it allows you to hear the language but also forces you to form an answer; even if you use the hints it is a useful process to form and actually speak an answer. Some other nice additions to this are being able to choose which part in the dialogue you wish to take, and being able to play back your own voice and compare it to a native speaker’s reading of the same line. The situations included in the three of the four titles that have the conversation practice are varied in and increase slowly in difficulty.

Each section also contains passages of Japanese about the chosen title (Japanese history etc), with videos and photographs to go alongside. The passages are written in Rom-ji and the student can click on each section or word and get a meaning for the segment or the individual word, or even the root of the word. This is very useful as a comprehension exercise for students who have learnt some Japanese already. It is often the first page encountered from the main title page though and I find it very difficult (although possible I am sure) to learn a language from scratch through the reading and translating of passages.

The listen and speak section, as most similar titles for me, was interesting for a short while, until the novelty of hearing your own voice wears off. This version, although possibly not the best voice recognition software, does offer more than just checking your pronunciation. It will check both your word and sentence pronunciation and also check how good your word and sentence dictation is by asking you to write the meaning of a spoken word or phrase. This is okay, but it is difficult to get the exact words sometimes, and it too loses its appeal after time.

The final section is the games. These are standard word games but do give you some options: you can change the speed, the range of segments from the title to be covered, and even which parts of speech you wish to concentrate on. As games go, they are aren’t too bad at all.

Most of the Learn Japanese Now course is actually quite good, but here is the main problem I have with it, and it is found throughout the course: The sole use of Roma-ji for all of the writing means that you can never learn writing though this course and for a software course I feel that this is an opportunity lost. There is no Kanji Japanese script at all and even the games and the dictation require you to learn the spelling of the Roma-ji words. Although transliteration can always be a very useful tool to learn a new language, spending time on learning how to spell these transliterations can be seen as a waste of time.

Without being able to learn reading and writing, then a software course loses one of its main weapons against the audio courses. They don’t have too many weapons to being with.

I do feel as well, that Learn Japanese Now would be very difficult as the only course for a complete beginner of the language. It should be used as a supplement or a later addition to something else.

Longevity

The longevity of this package is of course limited due to its lack of reading and writing of the official Kanji script. Also, the games and the listen and speak section are limited: The games may be more interesting than some as they use pictures and have more options than most; the listen and speak is not the best available but again has some good options. The conversation practice is good and holds the package together along with the comprehension passages. However both are possibly difficult and inappropriate for beginners and I feel would be of greater benefit as a supplement to another (probably audio) course. As a supplement the course’s lifespan would be increased as it could be used as a reference and vocabulary builder. The comprehension paragraphs provide plenty of information for a student and can be used to check and bolster vocabulary for a long time.

Ease of Use

As far as Software courses go, Transparent’s Learn Japanese Now is quite easy to use. It is not a very big programme and has clear menus and options to choose from. The only possibly confusing part is the drop down windows menu at the top which gives some vague words. This is not a problem though as this does not really have to be used.

Cost

The Learn Japanese Now course is very good value for money. On its own it is probably not enough to learn a foreign language, but at the very cheap price of about $70 it could easily be paired with an audio course. You could of course go for the Transparent complete course (which Lingualogue will be reviewing soon) which includes this package as well as the everywhere audio and the BYKI flashcard programme, for the same price as most other software packages alone.

Overall

Linguaphone allTalk is an excellent value for money product with an interesting storyline angle and a fixed system of listening, understanding and repeating. This system is slower than some and possibly takes the most effort of memorisation. Vocabulary is recalled from previous lessons but not to a large enough degree to make it naturally memorable. The vocabulary range, however, is extremely impressive: Each lesson comprises a huge amount of new words and phrases which may take a while (at least a few lesson reviews) to learn, but will provide an excellent fundamental vocabulary at the end and put you in good stead when you come to practice.

I like it when Linguaphone allTalk gives words that sound very similar to the words in English. This makes learning those words easy and helps build confidence, but it could be done more often.

Overall, Linguaphone allTalk is a very good product, but the system relies heavily on lesson review and memorisation, and this means that although a lot more vocab can be learned, it is learned with greater difficulty, and therefore more effort is needed than some of its rivals. Some people will like this, some will not. If you consider yourself a good audio learner and want to soak up as much vocabulary as possible then Linguaphone may be the course for you. You will have to put the work in, but at the current download prices of around $50, it is certainly worth considering.

Features

Linguaphone’s system is based on the three simple methods of ‘listen, understand, speak’. The allTalk line of products uses the same system throughout the majority of its 16 CDs albeit under a different mantra of ‘listen, understand, listen again – repeat’. In a nutshell this means that vocabulary is given in Italian (listen), then in English (understand), Italian again (listen again) and then a gap is left for you to say it aloud (repeat). This, is an over-simplification and there is more to the allTalk course than just this. It does, however, represent the basic structure.

The whole Italian course is based on the ongoing story of Sarah Jenkins, a young British woman who works for a wine company called Topqual. She is sent to Florence for a wine fair but cannot speak the language. Sarah is helped to get by and learn the language by Lorenzo Conti from Italio Bella, the organisers of the event and of course he teaches you along the way. This story runs throughout the whole course as Sarah and Lorenzo find themselves in different situations calling for different vocabulary and phrases.

The course uses a set structure and order for most of the lessons:

1. A whole conversation between Sarah and Lorenzo is played (he translates some as he goes)
2. The vocabulary for the first part of the conversation is given using the listen, understand, listen again – repeat technique.
3. The first part of the dialogue is repeated
4. A vocab practice lesson is given for the vocabulary learned: You must either translate the Italian into English or vice versa.
5. The vocabulary for the second part of the conversation is given
6. Vocabulary learned so far is tested with different situations and you must form responses
7. The second part of the dialogue is repeated.

These steps tend to be followed through most of the lessons, although other practices and tests may be thrown in to help you learn the material.

The lessons also contain the occasional ‘verb boxes’ where verbs are taken and conjugated for each personal pronoun, and other grammar rules and sentence structure rules are given along the way.

There is a book that accompanies the course containing all the vocabulary used.

Effectiveness

Linguaphone is over a hundred years old and one of the original language courses available. This made me a little nervous about reviewing it as I certainly didn’t want to do it a disservice but I also wanted to be as honest as possible. I have used Linguaphone before when I was about 18: it was the complete French course and I remember being extremely daunted by all the material and use of the foreign language. I was interested to see how the allTalk product would do.

To begin with I liked the scenario idea of the young lady on a trip to Italy and the whole course being based around her introduction to the Italian Language. She begins speaking English and slowly starts to speak in Italian as Lorenzo teachers her new vocabulary and sentences. The acting is well done and the Italian clear and easy to hear.

The main introduction of the vocabulary is in the lessons after the initial conversation is heard; the narrator gives the words as a list with the Italian and the English and then a gap. There is an awful lot of vocabulary here. If learning as much vocabulary as you can is your goal then this is ideal for you as they throw list upon list at you and then test them with practice lessons. It is very difficult to learn and remember all the vocab given, and reviews of previous lessons are essential. The method of delivery of the vocabulary reminds me of receiving vocab lists at school, and although the practice lessons are more original and effective than I remember them being at school, the method is possibly not the most efficient at helping students remember quickly.

The grammar is covered occasionally in the lessons with passing comments about important points, or the verb boxes which show full conjugation of verbs. This is adequate for a beginners understanding of the structure and grammar of the language, although as the amount of vocabulary learned is so high I would have thought more grammar would have been included. The book included covers a little grammar but is mostly just a dictionary of the vocabulary covered in the course.

Longevity

Linguaphone allTalk has an immense amount of vocabulary included in the 16 CDs, each lesson providing a lot of information to learn. This means that although this course may make learning the language slower than some of its rivals, the CDs can be reviewed again and again and the wealth of vocabulary can be learned over time (with the right motivation). It will certainly take longer to fully complete this course than most other audio courses, but if you did, your vocabulary bank and choice of available words and phrases would be much greater. Therefore if you have the desire to do so, Linguaphone allTalk courses could keep you going for ages.

Ease of Use

The CDs are obviously very easy to set up and start playing and the lessons very easy to follow. The only slightly confusing part is the way conversations are split and replayed over several lessons with the vocab lessons in between. Some people may lose track of what they were learning. It would also make it very hard for someone who stops the CD without making note of the time or track number to resume exactly where they left off.

Cost

Although the price of Linguaphone allTalk varies slightly between the UK and the US sites, it is still fairly good value for money. There are 16 CDs worth of lessons with a huge amount of vocabulary at a very reasonable cost. My one gripe would be that the course must be ordered as CDs and (as far as I know) cannot be ordered as a download. This is an oversight by the Linguaphone company and providing downloads would make the courses much more accessible to a wider audience. The Linguaphone All-Talk and PDQ courses are now available as downloads from their site and at a much discounted rate to the original version. This is a very welcome addition to their range and resulted in an increase of the cost score from a 9 previously to its current maximum.

Note: Linguaphone is currently offering Mp4 players with 16 hours of allTalk audio already installed. A fantastic way to begin learning a language.

Overall

Michel Thomas is an unorthodox yet effective method of learning the fundamentals of a language. The classroom situation may not appeal to everyone but it is relaxed and friendly and you can gauge your progress along with the other two students. Grammar and vocabulary is introduced and discussed effectively and you slowly learn to use different pronouns and tenses without realising what you are doing. The initial learning of words that are similar to English stocks you up early with enough vocabulary to form sentences, and then new words and vocabulary are brought in and used to form new sentences around them—you can make full sentences from the very beginning.

One of the downsides of the Michel Thomas course is that there is not a native speaker in sight. Michel can speak Spanish certainly and he teaches how to ‘push’ the tone and stresses on the words, but you can’t get away from the fact that he has a Polish accent and doesn’t sound Spanish in the slightest. Add to that the fact that his Polish accented English never really inspires and it could be said that he may not be the perfect man for the job (Although I never doubt his knowledge or his teaching skills).

It should be noted that the Michel Thomas group have recently brought out updated language courses in more languages, with different teachers. I will try and get copies of them to review soon but from what I have read they are supposed to be very good.

Features

Michel Thomas is a stand-alone audio course that places you in a classroom with Michel Thomas and two of his other students. Michel teaches you vocabulary and sentence structure through asking for translated responses to his English. This technique works but may not appeal to everybody. A lot of vocabulary is learned especially through his fondness for teaching words that are similar in English and the foreign language .

The audio files are simple to put onto CD, mp3 player or computer, and can be listened to anywhere at any time. Responses should be spoken aloud with the other students.

Effectiveness

Michel Thomas’s unashamed use of word similarity probably means you learn more words in this course than any other, for example there are literally hundreds of words in English that end in ‘tion’ that in Spanish are the same but end in ‘cion’. This means that you could learn many words just while reading this review, however, what is important is how many of the words will be useful for you in general conversation.

Michel Thomas does discuss tones and stresses (e.g most words have the penultimate syllable stressed) and pushes his students (and you) to pronounce the words correctly. One major flaw with this is that, although Michel Thomas is an extremely gifted linguist, he is not a native speaker. It is obvious he can speak Spanish fluently but he does so with a relatively heavy Polish accent. I have to say that although this is not ideal for learning a language perfectly I did not really find it a hindrance and found his Spanish quite easy to follow and learn. What i found more of a hindrance was his accented English. After a while I found his voice became a little monotonous and boring, and although he seemed nice and extremely patient, he didn’t seem extremely dynamic.

Response time

As you are counted as part of a trio of students in this course you are not given any pause time to think of an answer and respond. Michel says a sentence in English and you have the same time as the other students to respond. Thankfully most of the time this is not much of a problem as they do not tend to answer especially fast (especially the guy) and often get the translation wrong and have to do it again. There are occasions, however, when more time would be preferable and the pause button must be used—this is obviously not possible while driving or jogging though. For the majority of the time though the group session concept works just fine and it is actually quite satisfying when you see your progress next to the other students.

Spelling & grammar

Although Michel Thomas does do a a good job of reintroducing previous vocabulary as he progresses through his lessons, and he often uses word association to help you remember new vocabulary easily, I am not sure I can agree with his claim of ‘no memorisation required’; I think I understand what he means, but to me memorisation is committing something to memory, and if you don’t do that it is very unlikely that you will learn anything. That said, Michel does do a very good job of making life easy to remember things without ever having to write them down; he even spells words out so you can visualise them (in the Spanish course at least), and addresses grammar gradually as he goes along, even to the extent of showing how verbs are conjugated for each personal pronoun. He does all of this through conversation only, telling the students the rules and then putting them into practice sentences. This does work to a degree, and that degree will depend on what kind of learner you are. I liked it and found it surprisingly effective although not as engaging or memorable as the situation conversations in Pimsleur. The grammar and spelling of vocabulary is probably better in Michel Thomas than Pimsleur but if you want to just learn how to speak a language then I think Pimsleur edges it—although only just.

Longevity

I think Michel Thomas is a great introduction to a language, and the realisation that you already know hundreds of words in the language is a great morale boost for your studies. It is an excellent course to give yourself a foundation of vocabulary and grammar and probably the word recognition and pronunciation skills to get by, but if you want to get further in a language you will certainly need to progress past this. I am sure the advanced courses will take you somewhere along the way (I haven’t tried them) but if they use the same technique they will never give you everything.

Michel Thomas will give you an excellent all-round introduction to a language—but that is all.

Ease of Use

As with most audio courses it couldn’t be easier to use. Once the CD is in or the files have been downloaded just double click the lesson and you’re off. There is no writing or reading, just listening to Michel and translating the sentences he gives you. Learning the many Spanish words that are similar to English words was so easy that it’s a pity I cannot give it 11/10.

Cost

Michel Thomas is a very reasonable price for the 8 hour course [actually 10 hours now with the bonus review hours] especially if you buy it as a download. The official websites for Michel Thomas promote CD delivery only and (on the UK site) at a cost of £70 (about $100) for the Spanish foundation course. If you choose to go with Michel Thomas then I would definitely advise to download. It is of course also much easier to load onto an ipod or a phone or other mobile device as mp3s than the wav files of a CD. As a download you can get the course for much cheaper as well (about half the price of the official CDs) and yes they are perfectly legal. Excellent value for money for 10 hours of solid material.

EDIT: You can now buy Michel Thomas for around the $40 – $50 price range for almost all of the courses. This is fantastic value and should probably be bought by everyone learning a language just because it is such a steal at this price

Overall

Rosetta Stone is an excellent package for learning vocabulary and grammar and now can even help you improve your pronunciation as the new version has thrown in some rather good voice recognition software. I have only used level 1 up to this point so it is difficult to give a verdict on the entire course, but as it is I would say level 1 is certainly not sufficient on its own to speak a new language and takes things a little slowly for my liking. However I do feel like I have learned a lot of vocabulary and I have read other reviews that say that levels 2 and 3 take this vocabulary and turn it into conversational language, helping you to form word clusters and sentences which level 1 didn’t really allow me to do.

Rosetta Stone is obviously a great choice for visual learners as its main aim is for you to learn without translation, from your environment (or in this case pictures and video of environment) just as you did as a child. Discipline is needed here I think: Although Rosetta Stone is surprisingly fun to use and can keep you interested for some time, it will take some time before you can use the vocabulary you are learning. Unless your everyday conversations involve boys sitting on top of aeroplanes I can’t imagine you using Rosetta Stone to strike up a useful conversation with level 1. This means that you need to be patient and learn as Rosetta Stone wants you to learn—slowly and passively. That said, learn enough vocabulary and then get to level 3 and you might surprise yourself (and me) with how much you can say.

I still think audio courses are much better equipped to teach conversational language quickly, but Rosetta Stone can give you a strength in foundation and vocabulary that should not be discounted. I am not sure how well you can learn to speak a language solely through using Rosetta Stone packages, and the vocabulary used at the beginning is certainly not going to get you out into the piazza asking for directions, but the product is solid and very well made. It is definitely worth a try and I know from experience that many people love it and would never use anything else. One route I may go is to use Rosetta to gain the knowledge and then find another way (audio course?) to practice the conversation early on.

Features

The Rosetta Stone programs use a system of learning called Dynamic Immersion where the student is placed into a visual and audial immersion of the target language. No English at all is used—the concept being that of the natural language learning of a native infant. The fundamentals of the system rest on the four Is: Intuition, interactivity, instruction, and images. All four of these are used to make the learning experience as natural as possible.

In practice the student is given a series of pictures, with or without the meaning of the picture written in the script of the target language, and a word or sentence is spoken aloud. The student must choose the most fitting picture; if it is right you continue, if not you try again.

As you progress, the words become phrases and then sentences, and the simple objects in the pictures become actions, and then ideas and then more abstract concepts. Throughout this time your vocabulary and grammar is reinforced. English is never used through the course, the learning is based on seeing and doing.

The new level 3 courses also incorporate a pronunciation checker which uses voice recognition software to check how your use of the language sounds.

Rosetta Stone claims NASA as a customer

Effectiveness

When I first tried Rosetta Stone for a few minutes I had a feeling I wouldn’t like it. The system of showing four photos (some of them a little difficult to tell what they are exactly) and playing a snippet of audio and then expecting me to match the two seemed to me a worthless exercise and I couldn’t for the life of me see how this would teach me a language. I was, however, in for a surprise: The way the vocabulary is introduced, left and then re-introduced is actually pretty effective at helping you remember the words. Also the techniques of using only the target language and introducing vocabulary in sentences, helps build an understanding of the grammatical structure of sentences. It also gets pretty addictive it has to be said.

Admittedly to begin with you pick the correct image solely through the single voacbulary word and sometimes you may find yourself guessing the answer, but after a while you find yourself recognising parts of the language you didn’t think you had been learning.

The method of introduction for vocabulary is also clever. As each step is a quiz, it could be difficult to introduce new vocabulary and still give you a chance of choosing correctly, but the program solves this cleverly. When new vocab is introduced it is mixed with words you have already learned, so the choice can be based on the previous vocabulary while the first impression of the new word is made.

One point I am unsure of is the effectiveness of learning the foreign script through this method. Although having the script present must certainly be more beneficial than having no script at all, when the script is very different from the Roman Alphabet it is difficult to remember spellings of any kind. I have to admit though after some time i found myself recognising the form of certain words and I guess this is the beginning of learning. Maybe after longer use the written language would be learned more effectively (especially when you can use the audio-script setting)

Another, often heard complaint, is the choice of vocabulary used at the beginning of the course. Sure, the words are those that you would need to learn to have a reasonably extensive vocabulary, but one wonders how useful “The boy sits on the horse” would be to a new learner wanting to practice his new language. Rosetta Stone is certainly not for the casual traveller and must be used for an extended period of time before what has been learned could be used in conversation.

Longevity

Rosetta Stone has 3 levels and enough information and possible hours of usage to keep you going for a very long time. As well as that, I feel that the programs can be used again and again even after the initial learning course has been completed. The Rosetta Stone course covers a massive vocabulary range and it is unlikely that all of these words will be remembered over time. A review of the courses would help you realise your progress as well as help you fill some gaps of missed vocabulary.

The inclusion of native script also promises longevity. Although I am unsure of how easily it would be to learn the script in tandem with learning the language through the course, going through the material again at a later date just to learn the script I think could be extremely useful. Basically even if my Russian reaches a conversational level I will still use Rosetta Stone to make it just that little bit better.

Ease of Use

Compared to some other software programs, Rosetta Stone is a breeze to use. The only reason I gave it a 9 and not a 10 is simply because I dont think any software can be as easy to use as an audio program. There is still the menu page and a few different options to choose, and although a geriatric goat could probably traverse its way through the menus here, a complete technophobe may find the odd obstacle. But to be fair to Rosetta Stone their user interface is an extremely easy one to use and visually pleasing at that.

Cost

Yes, Rosetta Stone is quite expensive but is about on a par with other language software and the other top of the range language leaning programs. Being a software package I consider the price of Rosetta Stone to be of better value than similarly priced audio packages. This is because it has greater longevity, with audio, image, video and script included and possibly many more hours use. I imagine it cost a lot more to put together as well which should be a major factor in a packages sale price. The prices stated for Rosetta Stone are for a single level, whereas for around the same price Tell Me More provides a package of all three levels.

Overall

Pimsleur Language is a very effective program for learning to speak a new language: Pimsleur keeps you interested throughout the course and the 30 minute lessons are perfect bitesize chunks of work. The graduated interval recall is excellent at introducing and re-introducing vocabulary enough times to make it ‘stick’. I have heard there are 350 vocabulary words learned in level one and i am pretty sure that anyone can remember at least 80% of them when they finish the first time. Not a bad start to learning a language. Pimsleur does not specifically teach grammar but relies on the students recognising grammar patterns as they occur through the course and picking it up, pretty much as we did as children. The vocabulary learned through each entire course is quite small compared to other language courses

You cannot learn reading or writing from Pimsleur but if you are looking to start speaking a language as quickly as possible then this is probably the best starting point. As far as just learning to speak a language goes, there is nothing faster than Pimsleur. It may not have so much vocabulary, and is quite expensive, but it is very fast, and very effective!

If you have the funds to buy an audio course and a software (or writing) course, then Pimsleur should be the course you plump for every time.

Features

The Pimsleur Language System was invented by Dr. Paul pimsleur and is based around the principles of ‘anticipation’, ‘graduated interval recall’, ‘core vocabulary’, and ‘organic learning’.

Each lesson consists of a recorded conversation between a native speaker and a language learner. The conversation is then broken down into its component parts and you are invited to participate in the conversation by filling in the gaps out loud. This is pretty standard fare for language programs these days but what makes Pimsleur stand out are these principles that each lesson uses.

Anticipation – The course makes you anticipate the correct answer by asking you to form and speak the answer from memory to fill the gap before having it confirmed by the lesson.

Graduated interval recall – Makes the learner recall a learned word or phrase at increasingly longer intervals. So when you learn a new word, the lesson will keep throwing it at you to check that you have not forgotten it, but the frequency of its use becomes less and less over time.

Core Vocabulary – It has been shown that a large majority of basic language use is made up of a small number of words. This ‘core vobaulary’ is what Pimsleur concentrates on so people can become conversational as quickly as possible.

Organic Learning – The program uses an audio format because Dr. Pimsleur argued that most people want to learn to speak and understand a language. He saw listening and speaking as very different skills to reading and writing and saw that people would learn more effectively and efficiently using auditory lessons. He called this organic learning.

These four system components ensure Pimsleur is an excellent program for learning to speak a language, but it lacks the ability of other packages to help you learn to read and write the language as well. It also has no written transcripts or peripheral activities to accompany the program.

Effectiveness

I have to admit I found Pimsleur extremely effective at doing what it claims—that is helping you to learn and use a small core of vocabulary words very well. The graduated interval recall technique is so startlingly simple and yet so amazingly effective. The very first lesson i took with Japanese Pimsleur began on a bus with what sounded like a very long, extremely complicated exchange in Japanese between an American man and a Japanese woman. I have to admit I was a little daunted, but continued. The conversation was broken down slowly through the following 30 minutes sentence by sentence, each word translated and then each sentence reconstructed from the bottom up, beginning with one word and expanding until the whole sentence can be repeated by the student. It is vital that you speak the words and phrases out loud for this to work. I tried saying them in my head for a few sentences but it was nowhere near as effective as when I recited out loud.

I was amazed at how well the graduated interval recall helped me remember the vocabulary. Just as I was forgetting a word I had learned previously, it was slipped back into use and I recognised it immediately. When this is done enough times you do not forget. I stil remember the sentences I learned in the first lesson. I am not sure though how well it will stand up to speaking real Japanese with real Japanese people who dare to vary their conversations from the Pimsleur format, but we shall see.

Solely on the effectiveness of making what you learn “stick” Pimsleur is the best of all of them. What it does, it does with no equal.

Longevity

With its graduated interval recall, The information you will learn with Pimsleur will have a retention possibly greater than any other language program you can use. The vocabulary you learn will stay with you for years.

However, as Pimsleur uses only a core of vocabulary and only has 3 levels (for some languages) then it can never take you all the way to fluency on its own. You will need to learn new vocabulary eventually from somewhere else. The way the vocabulary is taught is excellent—probably the best available—but it is small compared to many other language courses. Many languages still only come with level 1 which can leave you feeling remarkably frustrated by the end.

Pimsleur also cannot help you read or write a language. Although this was the point of Pimsleur’s system it also means that you are restricted again if you want to take learning a language all the way. To really learn a language you need to know how to read and write the script.

I decided to upgrade the longevity score for Pimsleur based solely on the fact that I realised I could still remember the phrases of languages that I briefly studied with Pimsleur and then never looked at again. It may not offer such an extensive vocabulary but what it does give you it rams home, and I think you will never forget it.

Ease of Use

Possibly the simplest and easy to use system out there. You can take it anywhere you like: in the car, on your ipod, at home in bed. It is easy to learn from and the immediate gratification of speaking a new language aloud keeps you learning and staves off boredom.

Cost

Pimsleur is certainly in the higher bracket of prices within this market for what it offers. They do smaller courses which consist basically of fewer of the same lessons at a fraction of the price. However if you really want to learn to speak a language then you need the comprehensive courses. They are expensive but well worth it in my view. The smaller courses are created to whet your appetite and you will probably want to buy the comprehensive course when you have finished them anyway.

Overall

A top class language learning product and possibly the best in its field. The main advantage of Fluenz is the way it sets out to teach you as an adult. They recognise that adults learn differently to children and that they have a solid foundation of native language to build upon and compare to, and Fluenz uses this to great effect. They also recognise the importance for most language learners to learn vocabulary that is relevant and useful from day one, e.g. learning words like cellphone, and taxi rather than apple or dog. The method of instruction with Fluenz is also top draw. Although it doesn’t contain as much material as some of the behemoths of the language learning world (Tellmemore for one) it does deliver the material in a way that will keep learners interested for much longer than the majority of language courses. The one-on-one video instruction from Sonia Gil gives a personal touch to the proceedings and her careful breakdown of the conversations was like sitting and working with a personal tutor. The video tutorials are what really sets the Fluenz courses apart from the rest, but the interactive exercises are just as well made and just as important. The eight different sets of exercises for each lesson mean that each conversation and vocabulary set is supplemented and supported by extra work until you can understand, speak, read, and write each group of vocabulary with ease.

Overall, the Fluenz language courses are just possibly the best way to learn a language on your own ever devised.

I just wish they had more languages to choose from.

Features

Fluenz is one of the newest kids on the language learning block and is a completely brand new, built from scratch product, which means it comes complete with all the bells and whistles you could possibly want from a modern language learning course. The course itself was designed with adults in mind and with the knowledge that adults learn differently to children in that they have a well founded grasp of their own language to compare and to build upon.

The course is centered around a video tutor named Sonia Gil who gives us a human interaction that very few language courses offer. She begins each course with a short video introduction in front of a black background and discusses what has already been learned and what skills will be learned during that lesson.

When Sonia has finished her introduction (or you override her with a click on the ‘next’ button) you are played a brief conversation between two people that introduces the new vocabulary. The conversation can be played with subtitles of the foreign language only, the foreign language and the English language equivalent, or no subtitles at all. Fluenz recommends you play each conversation at least three times, beginning with the foreign language subtitles only, to give you an ear for the sound of the words. When you feel you have a good grasp of the conversation, you continue through to Sonia again. This time Sonia breaks down each piece of conversation word by word using some clever and memorable video manipulation of the words, and relates them to vocabulary and sentences learned in previous lessons.

When you are sure you have the lesson’s vocabulary securely stamped in your mind you can move onto the exercises. There are several exercises that will test what you have learned: The first is a simple replaying of the vocabulary, where you are asked to repeat the words aloud (which like most audio language courses, I would strongly recommend that you do). The second is to match the words or phrases learned with their English counterparts, and the third and fourth are to write the foreign word and phrase respectively from the English given. The fifth and sixth exercises are both audio and ask you to write the foreign word or phrase that is equivalent to the English that you hear being played. Fluenz provides a tones menu so you can add the tone marks to the words when writing if the language requires. The seventh and eighth exercises are conversation exercises: These allow you to take part in basic and more advanced conversations using voice recording software (if you have a microphone) and play back your responses to check your pronunciation. When complete you can move onto the next lesson.

Each Fluenz package also comes with audio CDs, which supplement the video course, Downloadable podcasts, and the Chinese package comes with Fluenz mobile—a complete reproduction of the contents of the course for Windows Mobile.

Effectiveness

The Fluenz language courses are possibly some of the most effective language learning systems ever made for adults. The whole idea was designed with adults in mind and concentrates on teaching the vocabulary that is the most quickly useable for the majority of people in everyday life. This is one of the benefits of FLuenz over some of its language software rivals: it does not try and teach you as a child and force you to learn vocabulary that is not immediately useful. It teaches you relevant language from the beginning and teaches it in such a way that makes it not easily forgettable. The use of video and the enigmatic Sonia Gil is another boon for the users of this software as it allowas a connection to be made, not unlike a teacher-student connection in the classroom, and the way the vocabulary is broken down makes it easy not only to learn the words, but to understand the structure of sentences within the target language.

When compared to its nearest rivals, Fluenz possibly does not teach as much vocabulary throughout its entire course, but it is taught in a more mature fashion. Students will realise they are learning from day one, whereas some courses can often leave students hanging for weeks until they realise they have learned something constructive, often because of the childlike method of association that they employ.

The exercises that Fluenz includes are also top-notch: They build the different skills of listening, reading, writing, and speaking, and although it does not include voice recognition software, this is a minor flaw in an otherwise excellent line-up and is barely missed at all. There is a voice recorder after all, and most people will easily tell if their pronunciation is good or awful when played next to the native speaker.

The one small gripe I would have with this software (and I assure you it is small) is that Sonia Gil is not a native speaker of the language. Although she is obviously very adept at speaking the languages that she is teaching, it would possibly have made more sense to use a native speaker of the language for authenticity. That said, the people involved in the conversations (some native speakers, some not?) all seem to have excellent pronunciations and accents and I am sure the fact that they are not native will not harm anyone’s chances of learning the language. Overall, Sonia Gil is an excellent choice for the presenter and she has the right amounts of charisma and authority to be believable as our teacher.

I would certainly take her an apple.

Longevity

The Fluenz course covers 150 hours (110 hours for Mandarin) of interactive and video instruction as well as two audio CDs (one for mandarin) and the Fluenz navigator—a booklet of vocabulary translated into English. This is quite an impressive amount of content to be getting on with, and can obviously be increased by reviewing lessons that you have seen previously, or re-doing older exercises to ensure you keep sharp. This is easy to do from the easy-to-use main menu and navigation page which allows you to return to any lesson quickly and painlessly.

As well as repeating the material, you can transfer the audio CDs to your mp3 player and practise listening to conversations as you travel around. The CDs provide ‘engaging audio workouts that mirror the progress of the actual tutor-led software’. It is a good idea to repeat these CDs several times to gain a good ear for the language.

Finally, Fluenz provides language podcasts for their customers which you can download to your ipod or mp3 player to supplement what you have learned throughout the course. They offer a more relaxed glimpse into the life of your chosen language and allow you to see the language in use in several real-world situations.

Overall, Fluenz will certainly keep you busy for a long time to come.

Ease of Use

It doesn’t get much easier than this. Many software packages can be a little confusing as they have many choices and settings, and often have you learning like a child through image association, which can be quite bewildering to adults in the beginning. Not so Fluenz: The lessons and exercises are set out in a linear fashion, one after the other, each one carefully planned to teach you the relevant vocabulary and then reinforce it again and again; you are given control over your learning ,however, with the simple ‘next’ button which allows you to skip any part of the course. Naturally, as with everything with Fluenz you can go back and do it later if you wish, simply from the main menu.

There is nothing complicated about the Fluenz language products, but that does not mean they are basic. They have managed to compile a powerful set of interactive language lessons in a simple and intuitive format.

Cost

The one thorn in Fluenz’s side is the price. The price for the first two courses combined is between $350 and $420 depending on your choice of course. This is expensive whichever way you cut it, but is not wildly different to its main competitors in the language software business. What you have to realise also is how much time, effort, and I presume money was spent in developing and producing the videos and the interactive exercises.

Fluenz is a multimedia feast of audio and video, and its price tag, which obvioulsy reflects this, is actually a reasonable price to pay for such an effective and fun package to use.

If it only costs you $400 to learn a language (and Fluenz certainly makes it easier to learn and less likely to get bored) then surely it is worth it in the long run. They also sell the courses seperately for about $220 each which is easier on the pocket, but if you can afford it I would certainly advise getting the two together.

Video Demo And Review Of The TellMeMore Software Webpass Course

Check out the 12 month Webpass for yourself

Overall

Auralog’s TELL ME MORE is an excellent and extensive all inclusive language learning package that can teach you speaking, listening, reading, and writing and ensure that your pronunciation of words is as close to native as you could possibly get. The TELL ME MORE dialogue sections are possibly the best audio/speaking exercises that we have tested and can help you learn to recognise script and audio while unconsciously learning conversation. It is also useful in the fact that you are replying to questions with verbal answers and not just clicking a box, so guessing is not such an option as in some other language courses (although it does begin with some multiple choice questions to get you started).

The other TELL ME MORE sections are now much more useful than they used to be as they have been structured to run along with the dialogue sections and not just added as extras as it sometimes felt in the previous versions. Now, when all of the exercises are done in order, it perfectly addresses all learning styles and allows you to learn each aspect of the target language, through varied and reinforcing exercises. You almost learn without realising it.

The voice recognition software is also top drawer and i am certain many people will love it. The word exercises are useful to check vocabulary and grammar and are a good review for what you have learned, allowing you to build a strong body of vocabulary.

TELL ME MORE is also huge: It has apparently over 950 hours (some claims have it as much as 2000 hours) of learning in it, which seems more than a sufficient amount for anyone who is serious about learning a language.

I do feel that because the package has so many different parts to it, it would be ideal for use in a structured learning environment. I cannot think of a product that would be better suited for use in schools or colleges to help students learn a language, when teachers can structure the lesson and ensure students go through workbook exercises to better their grammar and vocabulary.

I have always been of the opinion that audio courses are more efficient at teaching speaking a language than computer software courses. Although I still believe this to generally  be the case, TELL ME MORE has set its stall out as an outlier to this rule, and if you are really serious about learning a language to a fluent and literate level, then I have to admit that TELL ME MORE is probably the best product available for you today.

Features

TELL ME MORE is possibly the most feature packed language course that we have reviewed so far—It just feels huge. TELL ME MORE is an extremely impressive and sophisticated looking piece of kit: it is full of graphics, photographs, soundbites and videos and its speech recognition software is very possibly the best on the market. It does an excellent job of picking up on the tonal mistakes made when speaking Chinese words and can even show you how to form the words, using diagrams, if you are having difficulty. The resulting sound into the microphone can then be displayed as a voice pattern alongside the native speaker’s for comparison.

As well as a pronunciation aid, TELL ME MORE boasts very impressive dialogue sections that begin with various images of objects and actions, and questions based on these images. You respond to each question by choosing the most appropriate response to match the image and repeating it into the microphone. The questions become more difficult as the level progresses and the basic ‘question and answer’ situations become more like regular conversations. These are interspersed throughout other exercises within the TELL ME MORE software that build different skills: Word association games, gapfills, mystery phrases, word order exercises, dictation, and writing tasks that can be excellent activities to help you learn and remember the vocabulary as well as developing your listening, reading, and writing skills.

There are three learning modes to choose from within the TELL ME MORE language software depending on your preference and learning style. These are:

• Free-to-roam – Choose whatever activity and topic you want
• Guided mode – Takes you through lessons one at a time but allow you to choose topics and exercises
• Dynamic Mode – The program takes a stronger role in deciding the lesson and topic order that best suits your stated goals and your performance and can be a great help in planning and scheduling lesson times and learning pace.

Effectiveness

TELL ME MORE is an extremely well put together language learning software package that allows you to learn a language in its entirety while still remaining fun and interesting. There are few products available that allow you to advance in speaking, listening, reading, and writing a language all at the same time, doing the same activities—TELL ME MORE’s effectiveness at teaching each of these is top draw. The quality of the pronunciation sections is so high that even the poorest of linguists couldn’t fail, with enough effort, to sound like a native. Hearing your own voice speaking a word for the first time is often a startlingly blunt lesson of how bad you sound and slowly changing it to match that of a recorded native speaker perfects your spoken word.

The dialogue sections were my favourite parts of the course. Although they started off slowly and were quite basic in the beginning, building on the few new vocabulary words, after a while the questions became more situation based and probably more appropriate for everyday usage; eventually you find yourself having basic conversations with the computer through the microphone. I did like the way an English translation could be found for every single word by hovering over it allowing a look at the grammatical construction of every sentence. Once you get used to it, the dialogue portions of the software is actually very effective and allows you to recognise questions, form a correct response, and check your pronunciation at the same time.

The other sections of the TELL ME MORE software are blended seamlessly with the dialogue sections to ensure that you learn new vocabulary, remember what it means, be able to say it properly, and know when and how to use it. The combination of reading, listening, writing, and speaking, along with proper sentence construction has all the language learning bases covered and all the boxes ticked.

Longevity

I haven’t come to the end of the course for TELL ME MORE French yet so I imagine that the longevity for the TELL ME MORE courses in general will be quite substantial. The main reasons for a long life of use for this product is its big mix of different exercises and lessons.

As well as longevity through sheer size, Tell Me More also keeps things interesting as you learn, by swapping and mixing up the lessons and exercises so you not only practice different aspects of language learning but also keep from getting bored.

Ease of Use

The new Tell Me More products are infinitely more easy to use than the Chinese course that I first reviewed on here. The old courses felt cluttered and confusing, and although they did allow you a lot of control over how you learned, it always felt like you were being thrown into the middle of a foreign school with a book and a pencil and told to learn.

The new courses though have obviously had a lot more thought put into them regarding user friendliness. Although the control is still there, the course feels much more reassuringly linear and you can happily concentrate on the progressive learning rather than trying to figure out where to go next.

Cost

Tell Me More is very expensive—it is at the top end of the most expensive language programs available. However it does have surprising value for money. There is a an immense amount of information in the software package and enough lesson hours to keep you busy for a very long time. I can imagine that the work that has gone into the production of this product is very high and that warrants a reasonably high asking price. The speech recognition software alone is almost worth the money.

The reason I didn’t give Tell Me More a lower score for cost is that even though the one-off price for the package is higher than most, it does include enough material to take a student to advanced level so only one purchase is necessary while most other programs require you to buy level 2, level 3 and so on. Similarly priced products often sell their ‘comprehensive’ packages at twice the cost of Tell Me More.