Customer Reviews

Learn Dutch Now! 9.0

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I was recently hired to work for a Dutch-owned business. Their English is very good; my Dutch was non-existent. While it wasn't required that I speak Dutch, I often find technical articles in our joint database that look as if they could be useful. I could have them translated by the other employees, but it would be nice to sort through them myself. It would also be polite to be able to say a few words in their native language.

I looked on the internet for Dutch translation/language packages and found very few. Several were much too expensive to be useful. Then I found Transparent Language's Learn Dutch Now! It's a life-saver! The price was was great and it arrived promptly.

Now I am really enjoying the variety of learning methods such as videos, exciting games and intriguing stories. I particularly like the Vocabulous and the Pronunciation Feedback and Analysis feature. Dutch is very difficult to pronounce and this feature really helps with rolling "r"s. I recommend this to everyone.

I must agree that one could do a *much* better job of making a cd-rom for learning dutch (or the other languages). There's no systematic teaching of sentence structure, grammar rules, etc. - it's very poorly designed as a "language course". Also, the program (I'm using the Mac version) is many years old, and hasn't been updated for OS X. The sound and video are low-resolution and grainy.

On the other hand, I do find it useful, if only because a cd-rom is a better tool for practicing than a cassette tape. You can easily skip around the texts, click on individual words or whole sentences to hear them, see the (not always helpful) translation, etc. - so I would say that in conjunction with a *real* language course (maybe a good book) this could be helpful for extra practice. But ideally I would like to find a good-quality cd-rom language course. Anyone know of one?

Hello I'm a teacher of the Dutch Language on the college level in the USA. Dutch Now is an incredible program. I've been using it to help teach my students and they seem to appreciate the usefulness of it. Dutch Now has significantly improved my students pronunciation and listening skills through the audio features (such as Full Native Speaker Pronunciation). It has expanded their vocabularies through games like Vocabulous and just in general has helped to improve their language skills. Dutch Now has many features that provide for great practice and review. I would highly recomend this program if you wanted to learn or needed help learning Dutch.

As a CD designed for English speakers who want to learn Dutch, Learn Dutch Now 10.0 failed miserably. The content must not have been reviewed by a native English speaker, because some examples are given only in French or German, and many examples that are given in English are incorrect! Obvious errors and poorly designed learning structures abound. Of course some useful content is contained, but not content that one can rely upon if your reason for learning Dutch is for more than entertainment. This is my third language and my fiance's sixth, and neither of us found it useful enough to be worth the money or the time we invested in studying. We now have to invest in another program and spend many more hours studying from the beginning. We're not pleased at all.

I bought this program to learn Dutch because my ancestors were from the Netherlands so I had a general intrest in learing the language. To my surprise this program exceeded my expectations ten fold and has helped me on my way to learning the Dutch Language. Dutch Now teaches all the necessary skills to learning a language - Listening, Speaking, Reading & Writing, Vocabulary & Grammar. It does each of these in multiple ways which all seem to be effective. I really appreciated the conversation practices which are available for many different situations making this feature very useful for travel at the least. Technology wise this program makes good use of it with Advanced Speech Analysis and full motion video. Dutch Now most definitely deserves the 5 star rating.

I like this CD Learn Dutch Now it's helping me to remember my
native language. Thank you for writting it . Regards Aleida Ray