Customer Reviews

Tell Me More Spanish Performance Version 9 (10 Levels) [OLD VERSION]

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

I am fluent in Brazilian Portuguese and have wanted to learn Spanish for some time now. I was about to pull the trigger on Rosetta Stone when I saw some reviews on Tell Me More.
I would have to say that I'm incredibly pleased so far. Tell Me More uses so many more methods of presenting the information than other programs. I love the voice recognition software to practice pronunciation. I also really appreciate that at any time, I can open a separate window to focus on a particular word that is giving me trouble. It allows to you work on grammar, writing, spelling, and conjugation...4 major areas that I feel Rosetta Stone is very weak.
I do have to say that for kids or beginners, Rosetta Stone may be easier to use, but I don't think that I would have ever become truly fluent using RS.
I purchased the 10 level Performance edition and would warn you that there is a TON of information to cover, so don't expect to have everything gone through in a month. I'm still finishing up the intoductory lessons, which have been great.
I think the coolest feature so far while practicing using Tell Me More is the exercises where someone will speak to you, asking you a question, and the voice recognition software waits for you to vocally answer the questions.
All in all, a GREAT product for anyone wanting to really learn the language!

I just started using this about a week ago. I have gone through the first disk (I had a lot of third-year Spanish courses in college.) This is version 9. According to the TellMeMore website, the latest version is Version 10, which is a completed rewrite. They sell 10 Levels Version 10 for $549 and this one for $374. They have an on-line demo.

I majored in German and also studied a lot of Spanish, so I am familiar with the various teaching methods. Their method is a good mix, since it works on all six main areas of language: reading, writing, speaking, aural comprehension, grammar and vocabulary.

Actual news broadcasts is a particularly useful approach, since ALL language-learning programs basically use highly-scripted text.

They also have a 10+2 level package where the final two lessons are business-specific vocabulary.

The user interface could use some improvement. It took several hours for me to stumble on how to do the crosswords and Audio Comprehension questions. For crosswords, after you type in a word you have to click the "solution" icon, a lightbulb in the upper right corner. It then gives you the next word. Normal reaction is that you would only click the solution icon if you just don't have a clue and NEED the answer rather than HAVE the answer. For the Audio Comprehension questions, after you select the answer you also have to click the solution icon so the progress report will show you have completed that task.

There is one incredibly annoying thing with the crosswords ... the program distinguishes between accented and unaccented words that have the exact same pronunciation. So, for instance, if you type él instead of el or tú instead of tu (or vice versa) it considers it an error. They don't say "el -- article" or "él - pronoun". You just have to guess!

I DID NOTICE ONE SIGNIFICANT ERROR -- THEY GOT THE ALPHABET WRONG! Spanish has four letters that don't exist in English: ch, ll, ñ and rr. For instance, chico has four letters, not five. They don't list the ch or ll letters. As you go in further they eventually provide a LIST of the 29 letters. [Should be 30. I originally said there were 3 extra letters and recently noticed the error. I haven't used the program in awhile, so I don't know whether it shows 29 or 30.] But, by that time you are already used to thinking "say -- ache -- ee -- say -- o" (Chico) instead of "chay -- ache -- say -- o"). Also, you can't input the extra letters, which reinforces the error. (They DO have clickable options for accented vowels and Ñ.)

The "practice a phoneme" drills do have animated graphics giving a basic idea of placement of the tongue, etc. However, they use technical terminology only someone with linguistics training would know. (Where is the alveolar ridge?) Also, at least the diagram for t is wrong. It describes an English t, where the tongue does not touch the teeth. A Spanish t is a dental sound, meaning the tongue touches the back of the top teeth.

In the written portions, the program does distinguish non-English characters such as ú, á, í and ñ to force proper spelling but does not accept such characters from the United States-International keyboard layout. Therefore, every time you have to input such a character you have to pick it from a chart with the mouse instead of just inputting it from the keyboard with right-alt plus the letter.

The program is also mouse-intensive. When you finish a question you can't just press Tab or Enter to move to the next screen, you have to go to the upper right hand and click the Next button. Doesn't sound like a big deal, but it does quickly become annoying.

From what I have seen so far, having worked through the first disk, this is really not a program for someone who just wants to learn a little Spanish for vacation travel. It puts quite a bit of emphasis on proper word order, spelling (including proper letter accents), and even punctuation.

Because of the way lessons are broken down, you can repeatedly access a particular section and get repeated variations.

There are a few simple things it should mention early on that would make learning spelling and pronunciation much easier for beginners. For instance, it could mention that Spanish is almost 100% phonetic. Also, that the voice accent goes on the final syllable but on the penultimate (next-to-last) syllable if the word ends in a vowel or n or s, and in ANY multi-syllable word that does not follow that pattern you have to write an accent, e.g., seis but dieciséis; número; sábado. Also that pronouns get accents and adjectives/articles don't: he = él, you = tú, but el = the and tu = your. Also that question words get accents and non-question adverbs (etc.) don't: Where are you = dónde? but I know where = donde, How are you = cómo? but this ïs LIKE that" = como, etc.

Judging from the demo, this program is EXTREMELY customizable. There are six major categories and you can select which ones you want, ratios, etc. For instance, if you are primarily interested in being able to read you could set it to emphasize that rather than speaking and aural comprehension. Judging from descriptions from professional reviewers, Tell Me More seems to be the "Rolls Royce" of language-learning programs. Although I have only been using it a short while and am just starting to get a good idea of the features, I think I would agree. (My undergrad major was languages and linguistics, I spent a year in a Ph.D. program in linguistics and German, and I have studied German, Yiddish, Spanish, French, Russian, biblical Hebrew, Latin, and English linguistics and I have about 90 semester hours in various foreign language courses at the post-secondary school level.)

Although this seems pretty expensive, 2009-2010 tuition for just one 3-semester hour course at Houston Community College, for example, for a Texas resident living outside Houston is $338 plus fees, etc. And beyond second year, college language courses focus on literature, so you don't learn a lot of words you would need in everyday use.

The Nuance voice recognition is VERY good and doesn't require "training" the program. It can pick up the difference, for instance, between aspirated (the puff of breath with English initial p) and unaspirated p and dental (Spanish) versus (English) alveolar t. When practicing sentences, it will point out the particular word that needs to be practiced.

An important point regarding voice-recognition sentence practice: It expects you to pronounce each word separately. Even if you pronounce them clearly, if you run words together it considers it wrong. (Actually, American news anchors, actors, etc., say each word separately, but most people don't realize it.)

As you get more advanced, the program provides an increasing variety of activities. So far I have found it very good and still interesting, even though I am going over basic introductory material.

I find the overall use of this program to be very limited for total beginner in Spanish. User needs to have some background in the language.
It starts out with zero vocabulary building or sentence structure exercises. The interface is a bit slow, even on my high performance machine.
Very disappointed with the tech support as they, cut and paste answers from the owners manual. They were zero help and didn't seem like they knew there own program.
As far as the their "Guarantee" really look at the fine print before you buy...
Too expensive a piece of software to be this poor.

I owned the previous version of tell me more and was very satisfied with it. Living in Mew Mexico, I figured that learning Spanish would be very useful. I decided to buy this latest version as it has much more content than the one I owned. I was really impressed with it. The interface is nicer, the speech recognition has been updated, and there are tons of new features. I really like the ability to take online tests, and I can chat with an online advisor whenever I want and it has helped me a lot.

I had couple of classes in high school but never really learnt anything to be honest. My new year resolution was to finally learn Spanish so I did a lot of research online to find the best product. I am a complete beginner in Spanish and was a bit afraid to buy this product after reading some of the reviews online. As soon as I got the program, I noticed that they had a new introductory level, which was very basic and easy enough for me, the rest of the program is really interactive and I loved the speech recognition.

I looked at demo of Rosetta Stone and Fluenz and found them too repetitive and quite honestly a bit boring. I wanted to be able to speak Spanish and go beyond the typical useful sentences and fell that tell me more was a better solution. Also, I had a question on using the program, called them and got a very professional and prompt answer, they even suggested an online demonstration on how to better use the program.

Overall, a great product, I will buy French for my brother who is going to France in April.

Don't buy this if you have never had any Spanish. Also, it won't run on your PC without the CD. If you lose the CD, they charge $50 to replace it.

I always wanted to learn Spanish and wanted to know more than basic words and sentences. I had tried audio CDs and other programs and never learnt more than several sentences as they did not engage me. I love the fact that tell me more has a lot of different activities and I am really looking forward to coming home and working on it. The voice exercises really helped me improve my pronunciation and I feel confident now in speaking Spanish. I finished 2 levels already and am sure that I will be able to reach an advanced level with this program. It is very comprehensive and still a great value.

This language learning software has problems. It does not build sequentially at all. It gives a basic vocabulary for a particular section which is fairly lengthy. That's fine, I wanted to be challenged. But learning that vocabulary is only part of the required vocabulary to be successful with the sections. New words are assumed that are not in the glossary but the knowledge of which is essential to understand the review activities. I find that to be poor teaching strategy. My vocabulary building activities are flash cards. Compare that with other software programs such as Rosetta Stone that actually uses the program to build vocabulary and you can appreciate the difference.

Another complaint that I have involves the native language speakers. They speak so fast and unclearly that it is hard to relate the conversation to the written words. I don't think their responses are instructive. That may reflect the reality of listening to a foreign speaker but the learning process should lead the neophyte stepwise into the reality of learning a foreign language which this software does not.

I have difficulty with the language understanding process. The machine does not recognize my verbal answers to many questions. What I find paradoxical is that when I go to the pronunciation seminar, which is part of the software, I can get top marks for the pronunciation of a particular word, but can still not make the computer understand my response in the question and answer section. Something is amiss here.

This program is pretty good. Much more affordable than Rosetta Stone but I was disappointed to find out the Spanish is as spoken in Spain. My husband is from South America and I was hoping to learn spanish to speak when we go visit his family and he noticed a lot of words that they don't say there. Other than that, it is a good program. I do wish the help window could stay open while you navigate through the lessons. You need to open and close it if you want a particular word translated and that takes some time for the window to launch. Not a big deal but wish it could stay up while I progress through the lesson.

I was really exited to get this program and give it a whirl, but it fell short of my expectations. It's actually quite confusing, it expects that you know some basic spanish, which I do, but otherwise I would be completely lost. The voice recognition that is so revered is the biggest disappointment. Even though you say it the same way and at the same rate as the model it accuses you of going too slow and you have to try to say it while going twice the normal speed (absolutely appalling)Then half the time it says it can't understand you! What Bs! I know I'm pronouncing it right, I took 2 spanish classes at my high school. Then, the models use words you don't even know and speak so fast you wouldn't know what they were saying if the words weren't on the screen. Ultimately, this product is not constructive and is absolutely horrible and extremely frustrating! I recommend you find another language software if you want to begin Spanish because you will have no clue what the heck's going on!