Berlitz Passport to 31 Languages

by The Learning Company

Product Details

• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• ASIN: B00000JLPW
• Date first available at Amazon.com: November 4, 2005
• Average Customer Review: 2.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #16,737 in Software (See Top 100 in Software)

Product Description

From Children's Software Revue® -- "Subscribe Now!"

Extremely dry and relatively low-tech in design, this program exposes students and travelers to as many as 31 languages ranging from the usual English, Spanish, French and German to the uncommon Arabic, Indonesian and Hindi. The format is the same for each language. Students pick a topic like clothing, food or travel. Next, they choose from activities that let them hear associated words or phrases, match words to their pictures, or find items that don't belong from groups of words. While these activities provide some exposure to the new language, they are, for the most part, poorly designed, limiting the learning experience. Difficulty levels are absent, the fun factor is missing, and the level at which the content is presented is very uneven. In one activity, kids are simply matching words to the objects, while in the next, they're expected to decipher phrases.

The best part of the program is clearly the voice recognition component. With this valuable feature, students can evaluate the accuracy of their pronunciation of words or phrases against that of a native speaker. Being able to explore 31 languages in one three-CD package is also a strength, even if the presentation is less than optimal.
Teaches: 31 languages such as Spanish, Swahili, Arabic and Greek
Age Range: 12-up Copyright © 2000 Children's Software Revue

Product Description

With this multilingual talking dictioinary and phrase book, you'll learn vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation in 31 languages. You'll soon master skills for travel, school, and everyday enjoyment.

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars If it looks too good to be true....., March 19, 2005

By 

Sarah Nalle "Bookaholic" (Louisiana, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Berlitz Passport to 31 Languages (CD-ROM)

I wanted some software to provide exposure to a variety of foreign languages. This does provide that, but it's all very minimalist. Also, the program did not work as it should have. Transliteration was only available for "certain" languages; it was absent for some of the one's for which it is completely necessary. The audio examples were spoken too quickly for me to decipher them in some cases, and as transliteration was not available, I could not try to phonetically decipher the words. If you want exposure to something that uses basically the same alphabet as Englist (i.e. French, Spanish, Italian, German,etc.)it will do OK, but more thorough programs are readily available for these languages. If you want to learn more exotic stuff like Arabic, Russian, Swahili, Japanese, Cantonese (which is what I wanted and is harder to find), those languages are offered in this software, but it doesn't do much good without the transliteration feature working on all of them. Additionally, when I tried to get tech support, I was informed that the company does not produce this version anymore, so tech support for it is no longer available. Bottom line, for me, it was a Passport to Not a Whole Lot.