Priced similar to Fluenz and Rosetta Stone, it is not cheap, but offers a comprehensive language learning lesson in a box. There are various levels of lessons to choose from: beginner to advanced. I tried out the beginner lessons, since I know almost no French.
From the first word, you will learn to speak, read and write French. The only problem is there is no explanation on the French alphabet or pronunciation. Somehow, the "teacher" expects you to know which letter with the correct symbol to choose. I got it correct for the greetings, but I imagine that spelling will get more difficult as the lessons progress. If you don't explain the alphabet to me, how can I learn to spell correctly? For that matter, my pronunciation will also be affected as I don't know how to sound out each letter.
In each part of the lesson there is audio and pictures, along with the written sentences. What is puzzling is I am expected to guess the correct sentence when I've only been taught one of the sentences and not the others. You can right click on the word to get the pronunciation and translation into English, but simply by looking at the picture, you could end up with the wrong answer. Once you have clicked on the answer, a "Check Your Answer" box pops up. Click on the box to see if you got it right. If you did not, a yellow "Show Solution" box will pop up to show you the correct answer. Once you have got the correct answer, a green box will pop up to tell you you're correct and can move on to the next part of the lesson.
The software is interactive, so there is a voice recording function to record your voice and play it back. In both the native speaker's pronunciation and yours, the wave forms will be shown. I didn't find this useful as I have no idea how to interpret the wave form and adjust my pronunciation accordingly. The software will tell you on a coloured scale if your pronunciation meets the minimum standard. If it's blue, you have to keep repeating till it turns green before you can carry on. I found the Adobe Flash microphone a pain. It worked well on single syllable words but failed to pick up the first syllable in multi-syllable words. I had to speak loudly for it to pick up my voice. If I spoke too loudly, a box would pop up saying that there is a possible problem with my microphone. Word endings were not picked up either. I ended up getting fed up after about 3-4 attempts and moved on without "completing" that section.
At the end of the entire lesson, a graph will show how much of the lesson you have completed (meaning how much you got correct) and what lessons need to be repeated. The only problem is that when you click on "continue", it makes you repeat the entire lesson instead of allowing you to choose only those parts that you failed to get correct. I suppose if you're a serious learner of the language, repetition will help you remember.
Overall, Tell Me More language learning software is an excellent package. The beauty of this software lies in the fact that you can choose the language of instruction. If you don't know English, you can choose Chinese, Japanese, Italian, etc, as the medium of instruction, whereas Fluenz and Rosetta Stone are entirely from the English-speaker's standpoint. At the end of the entire set of lessons, you will have mastered the language you are learning. Well worth the money spent.
Have fun learning a language!
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