Best language learning software/course EVER!!

Pros: So I wanted to learn Mandarin and proceeded to get a little dictionary (useful now that i can speak some), the Pimsleur Method and Rosetta. Without going deeply into why I disliked the last two solutions on my list, as soon as I finished the demo lesson I downloaded of Fluenz I had an email into them that night and begged them to get a copy to me by Friday (before the weekend) so that I could dig into the course. I am on lesson 14 now and still love it and have learned more in a much shorter time than with either of the other methods...and more importantly retained it and find myself thinking of sentences using the verbs and such that I have been learning. The workouts are engaging (albeit frustrating at times ;-)) and the instructor led portions are crucial for understanding the dialog in a way that breaks it down to where you arent just understanding what was said, but how to use that information in other ways. I can't wait to finish this course and I am hoping they are working on an advanced course for people that have finished this one.

(am thinking that once I finish lesson 15 Ill go back and do the first 15 again, just to reinforce)...either way, this software rocks, I love it.

Cons: the version 1.0 has a few small bugs in it, but i just got 1.1 in the mail today, so maybe they have fixed those things. Small stuff really - like when you are typing in the phrase or whatever (in pinyin) and you are using the same accented character twice successively, you have to cursor over to the input field again, click on the end of the word you are working on and then insert the new character - otherwise for some reason if you are doing it the way it normally (and is supposed to work) the repeated character inserts right next to the previous instance of it (say a dropping/rising O for instance).

Other than a couple small things like that (which are easy enough to fix with a couple of code tweaks), its outstanding.

Posted: 16-May-2007 05:21:18 PM