TellMeMore Review
Languages: Arabic, Chinese, Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Spanish
Positives
Negatives
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.
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.
Check out a rough overview of the Tell Me More Online French course in the video below
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.
Usability
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.
Pricing
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.
