Tell Me More French - A Teacher in a Box

I started this review of Tell Me More French thinking I would utilize the software from the perspective of a busy business traveler who wants to accomplish several small things upon his landing in Paris. My goals, as I started to use the software for the first time, were to learn how to hail a cab, tell the cabbie to take me to my hotel, request where my friend’s office address is located, travel to the office, and then get back to the hotel for the evening.

The very first thing I noticed was that I had greatly underestimated what Tell Me More French offered. Discovering the amount of information and the detailed lessons contained within the software is like opening up a teacher in the box. Although I have little hope of quickly accomplishing my original objective (due to the incredible amount of information I need to sort through to find the proper lessons), this is the program for those people looking for language software and who are in it for the long haul.

To date, I have used many

different types of language software for much the same reason as my original objective when I set out to review Tell Me More French. Although those other programs excel in being able to quickly deliver targeted information in very minimal amounts of time, they pale in comparison to the content and depth of learning you can accomplish with Auralog’s Tell Me More French. If you are the type of person who prefers online classes and learning on the computer, you should definitely check out Tell Me More French.

Security and privacy in language software is not something I’m used to, as a long-time user of the Rosetta Stone series from Fairfield Technologies. The ability to set up multiple users secured by passwords is a pleasing surprise in Auralog's Tell Me More French. [See Image 1]

As you move through your lessons, the program tracks your progress as well as files located on your hard drive. You are presented with the capability to remove this tracking under User Options. [See Image 2]

Tell Me More French comes with four discs and a basic headset that uses your sound card audio jacks. As a user of speech recognition to do my job daily, if you’re going to heavily use the speech recognition aspect of the software, I believe you would be best served by taking the time to purchase a nice USB headset.

That said, the installation of Tell Me More French was smooth and fast. I did not experience any errors in the installation, initial startup, or any subsequent usage.

I was quite pleased with the quality of the in-application support in Auralog’s Tell Me More French. An animated cursor travels the screen to show the user what is expected of them. Large text boxes hover next to the cursor and explain the screen in a quick and easy manner. [See Image 3]

Upon your first login, you're also presented with a large tips screen, which will take you through an example of this automated help. By the time you are ready to go ahead and begin using the program, you have a good understanding of what is expected throughout the lessons and the activities. [See Image 4]

Tell Me More French's guided mode takes the user through a set of activities and lessons designed to give them skills in reading and language comprehension, as well as writing and listening comprehension. I selected the ABCs as my first lesson per the recommendation on the screen.

My first screen presented me with a large letter A and native male speaker asking me a question. There are similar screens for picture and word association (with and without speech recognition), as well as straight word association and words and functions. [See Images 6-10]

I found more negative reinforcement, like I was expecting, in the dynamic mode. I also expected the dynamic mode to be adaptive and start you from the very beginning, moving you up based on your skills. Lending to that thought, when you open up the dynamic mode, you are presented with either standard objectives or personalized objectives.

After selecting the Very Easy option, I was taken through a very similar lesson as that in the guided mode. One of the lessons was a crossword puzzle where a female native speaker would speak the word, and then I would attempt to spell the word correctly for the open area of the puzzle. This was a rather cool activity and different from other language software that I’ve used.

In the dialog mode you have the option of viewing in English or in French. This mode seems much faster-paced than the guided. This feature would be great for a student as a way to assess their progress over time. [See Images 11-14]