Learn Spanish Now! 9.0

by Transparent Language

Product Details

• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces
• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B00005Y3VA
• Item model number: 744573051150
• Date first available at Amazon.com: April 4, 2002
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #8,703 in Software (See Top 100 in Software)
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes

Product Description

Amazon.com Product Description

Learn Spanish Now! 9.0 Deluxe takes you from beginner to confident speaker in no time. Listen and speak activities, grammar tools, and vocabulary games build a solid foundation, while real-life video content lets you interact with native speakers. Learn Spanish Now! also adds online features that create an interesting and authentic atmosphere, making it fast, fun, and highly effective to learn Spanish.

Learn Spanish Now!'s four stimulating titles include: Fundamental Spanish, Survival Phrases for Spanish, Conversations in Spanish, and A Spanish Adventure with Andrés. GrammarPro!, the software's comprehensive grammar tool, adds more than 10,000 words, extensive tutorials, and grammar quizzes to your desktop. Installed, GrammarPro! integrates seamlessly with all four Learn Spanish Now! titles to provide detailed grammar analyses with just a click of your mouse.

Online features, fun interactive games, conversations, and phrases round out this deluxe suite. Practice your pronunciation using the integrated speech features, then record your voice and replay your conversation. Learn at your own pace by deciding when you need translation. Microsoft Windows users also receive GlobalWriter98, a word-processing tool that helps you write in more than 100 languages, as well as a handy screen saver.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

29 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars OK for working on pronunciation and listening, June 16, 2005

By 

M. Fairchild "Books my thing" (Tennessee) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

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This review is from: Learn Spanish Now! 9.0 (CD-ROM)

For all their intricate windowed presentation, these programs fail to present more than a few vocabulary words, offer no systematic presentation of grammar, and don't even have a voacabulary index. The screens devoted to letting you imitate native speakers can help you improve your pronunciation, but you will do that better and faster with a teacher or native speaker. Same for listening - there are simply too few selections to get you beyond learning to understand some rote passages.

The exercises are very disppointing. They are randomly repetitive, so in a group of 5 questions (or activities, as they call them) you may end up doing the same one 5 times.

Finally, there are outright errors in the English translations, in English spelling, and sometimes, at least in the Spanish version, in the Spanish spelling.

On the whole, maybe worth purchasing cheap and used, but like most computer based language learning programs, you can do far, far better with a printed workbook that comes with a tape or CD.

28 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Clever and fun software, August 11, 2003

By 

C. Jacobs (Melbourne, Australia) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Learn Spanish Now! 9.0 (CD-ROM)

After getting the hang of this product I can highly recommend it. I expected a linear series of lessons, like an animated textbook, and so I was slightly bewildered by this program at first. A little experimentation, however, soon yields great results.

What you get is 4 "titles", multimedia chapters of a few thousand words each consisting of text and some video (two titles are entirely video based). Basically, it's up to you to make your way through this content at your own pace. The software makes this very easy since each word and sentence is playable individually, pronounced in a clear voice (separate from the video soundtrack), and is playable at multiple speeds. The meaning of each word and sentence is displayed at the bottom as you read or play it, along with a grammatical breakdown. This line-by-line reading and viewing is the core of the program. The quality of the video is excellent - interesting and humorous (Andrés visits Spain, Puerto Rico and Colombia clumsily filming advertisements).

Once you've made your way though a title (or a section within a title), you can then move on to the other activities - crosswords and 7 other games and exercises, generated dynamically from the sections you are comfortable with. The dynamic nature of the activities gives them almost infinite reusability and they are almost addictive. After completing a section I look forward to the games as a fun test.

After that, you can use the pronunciation tools. The software analyses your voice in a variety of ways, but I don't put too much stock in it except as an good way to get you to record and listen to yourself.

Finally a few extra tools allow you to keep custom lists of words to learn, make grammatical notes, etc. These lists can be imported into an accompanying flashcard program. My only complain is that you can (no longer?) export the lists as text for use elsewhere - what gives?

Overall I'm pleased with this purchase - and I've tried the competition. My only caveat is this software is probably not suited for the rank beginner, a basic grounding in the grammar and vocabulary would make this program more productive for you. They do not make this clear on the packaging, though.

22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A little advanced. I needed something basic., September 12, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Learn Spanish Now! 9.0 (CD-ROM)

I felt intimidated using this program. I have only a limited study of Spanish. I took Spanish one year in high school a decade ago. I need something to give me basic vocabulary and simple sentences, to begin with. This program is great if you need help with pronounciation and further study of the language.

It gives wonderful situations and survival phrases. In the sentences you can click on any word and it gives the meaning, the root verb ( if that applies), you can have the program pronounce the word for you.

It doesn't have a dictionary though. You have to buy another program to go with it for that. I was very disappointed about that.