Rating:  - Software Quality
A note about the "look and feel" of this software. When I loaded the software, I felt like I had been transported back into the 80's. Installation messages about graphics modes. Unsophisticated/flat graphics. No installation mode that allows the software to be run without the CDROM (so forget running out of the box on a laptop without a CDROM). If it were free, or maybe even $20 or $30, OK. But this for close to $200?
Rating:  - Chinese with a bang
THis program allows you to learn the language from many different angles. THe program allows you to work on grammmar, pronunciation, tone, and the begining of writing charaters. It helps you to make mental connections between concepts and words. I found the program extremely helpful in learning the basics of the language and continuing on to harder content.
Rating:  - I have another version of Auralog that was also a waste of money.
Fortunately, I paid a lot less for my version. The descriptions give by the other reviewers sound very familiar. I am at the intermediate level and my complaint is the paucity of content. It took me very little time to exhaust, and thus memorize, all of the games, etc. I felt cheated as well.
Rating: - Borderline Fraud
Wow...I should have heeded the warning of that other 1-star review.
Let me give you some background on what I was looking for. I started out with "Instant Immersion" Chinese audio cd's from my local bookstore. I didn't like not being able to SEE the word I was pronouncing and it was very frustrating. I wanted to be able to read and learn, not just regurgitate.
Next I picked up a Living Language audio cd Chinese set. This time it had a book to go with it. It's pretty cool and I learned a lot very quickly through the book and the cd's.
But I thought...there must be a really good CD-ROM out there to help someone learn Chinese. Searching through the Internet I found a cool flashcard program. You could select a category (restaurant, animals, numbers, etc.) and it would show you a flashcard of pin yin or hanzi for you to type in the "english". If you got it wrong you click and it shows you the English. It drills it into your head very well and I liked it a lot.
Well, I thought that was a start, but there must be something really interactive and amazing out there. I clicked through the pages of Amazon to find one...skipping all of the "immersion" ones and found this. Tell Me More Chinese.
It sounded really good. It had interactive quizzes, crosswords...lots of interesting bits. And an intriguing voice recognition technology to make sure you are pronouncing properly...with a microphone included!
Okay...so I've spent the last couple of hours playing with it and it didn't take me long to get that sinking feeling...that I just blew $175 bucks on something I'll never use again.
The reason, as the other review here alludes to...is that there is no instruction!!! You boot it up and you can basically do 2 things right away. You can look at a very long list of seemingly random Chinese words (no "wo" or "ni" or anything that would make sense to learn immediately). What you do is repeat the word into the microphone after you hear it. The program gives you a score. This gets very boring...very quickly.
Next are the activities. Well...they didn't seem available for level 1. Hmm. Okay, so I'll click on dialogues. They give you a word in pinyin, with the audio, and you have 3 pinyin choices to match it up with. The only problem is...there has been no instruction for you to be able to know what ANY of the words mean! It's like going into a language course and on the first day being given a long quiz to answer. There is no point. I know nothing! TEACH ME SOMETING! So eventually I realized that if you click an American flag icon at the bottom of the screen then the pin yin converts to English. Only problem with this is that the original word...and the 3 answers...don't match up to my mind! An example...I was given a word that meant "enemy"...and my three options were "drawing", "chrysanthemum", or "to break".
My first question would be...what does a drawing, a chrysanthemum or breaking have to do with "enemy"? And for another thing...why are any of these words at all relevant to A BEGINNER LEARNING CHINESE!?!!?!?!?!!!???
Next I moved on to the "Resources" section. It has a glossary...basically a Chinese/English dictionary with clickable audio. Neat. Also it has a grammar section with lessons. FINALLY...I'll be able to learn something. So I clicked on the "numbers" section. Well, it does give you the numbers one to nine, and then quickly moves to very large numbers. The problem is it gives you incredibly difficult and long example sentences such as "This stadium has a capacity of 35,000 people."
Which if you want to know, in Chinese looks like this:
"Zhe ge tiyuchang keyi rogna sanwanwuqian wei guanzhong."
Umm...sure. Why the hell is that in a section for beginners? And why is that the VERY FIRST THING YOU LEARN!?!!?!!??!??!??
Nothing about this program makes any sense. It seems to me like they just came up with a voice recognition technology and quickly slapped together a bunch of crap around it, boxed it up, and sold it to unsuspecting people like me.
My search for a half-decent "Learn Chinese" CD-ROM continues...in the meantime I'll go back to my Living Language audio cd's and coursebook.
Rating: - No Instruction
This software is basically a series of exercises. I'm sure it's great if you are working in a classroom setting towards Chinese proficiency, but it's basically a $175 paper weight (and free headphone / microphone) if you don't already have a good basic knowledge of the chinese language.
The exercises themselves seem pretty good -- nice layout, easy to understand, and generally pretty useful. The fatal flaw though remains the lack of instruction. The software functions much more effectively as a series of quizzes than as a tool to improve one's ability.
For the record, I speak three languages fluently. If I may be so bold, I don't think that it's operator error.
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