Tell Me More Premium Spanish - Learning Made Fun in any Dialect

Auralog Tell Me More Premium Spanish's full version really produces.The interactive exercises include a plethora of preestablished dialogs that are structured to speed you along, correcting spoken answers with an emphasis on proper pronunciation. In total, there are almost 5,000 exercises broken down into some 37 activities, and broken down further into six workshops that cover all levels from Basic Beginner through Articulate Advanced.

One of the more impressive exercises was one where you read a sentence and then select the right word and say it, rather than just clicking to choose it. Words are repeated and can be spoken as many times as you would like. I continued to test-speak some of the words as many as 65 times and the program just kept repeating the word, all the while rating and graphing the quality of my pronunciation. And not only is the repetitive-word and sentence-track pronunciation rated on a graphical scale, but you can click to hear your own recitations and compare them to the graphical data.

The installation of Tell Me More Premium Spanish was smooth. After the website analyzed my computer for compatibility and installed some plugins, I was ready to go. The first dialog module was easy to understand and moved at a very fast pace, just like a real-life conversation (with no waiting to load).

The online version of Auralog's Tell Me More Premium Spanish offers a learning path that unlocks some additional activities but it is limited, preventing users from selecting as many activities and modules as the full version. The online version, though generously equipped with many different types of exercises to choose from (including Speech, filling in the correct word, reading, and a test of comprehension through a written summary), does not have the full version's extensive range of exercises to choose from.

Overall, Auralog's Tell Me More Premium Spanish rewards correct pronunciation and it can move along at a frustratingly rapid pace, but how can I complain about the computerized instructor's demand for perfection?

What's Hot: 
Auralog is a company with sufficient insight to brilliantly create a program that distinguishes from Spanish spoken in Latin America and Spanish spoken in Spain. They boldly admit that these two are as different as French and Italian, which to the multilinguist and student ultimately infers that they are truly more similar than they are different.

Tell Me More Spanish costs less than most classes and it is far more in-depth, comprehensive, and effective.

What's Not: 
Throughout the written exercises, Tell Me More provides Spanish-accented letters to click. This may be helpful for learning which of the letters are accented and how, but a key or a guide that referred to a keyboard shortcut would have been more real-world. This is a glimpse into the limitations of the computerized instructor.

What's Hot: 
Auralog utilizes Spoken Error Tracking System (S.E.T.S.) technology. This technology will amaze you as it teaches you. It might even improve the way you respond to automated voice recognition telephone systems.

What's Not: 
Tell Me More Spanish introduces the elements of Spanish accentuation but does a poor job of explaining its concepts.
This is easily overcome with the many customization options that make repetition available, and in some areas are part of the exercises.

What's Hot: 

Tell Me More Spanish Premium's full version allows you to change some of the options, such as:

General options

• Level of difficulty on speech recognition words
• Timer duration
• Media quality (graphics)
• Translation of words (user can activate)

Activities options

• Dialog set to expression or comprehension along with number of wrong answers option.
• Pronunciation (display pitch curve or display waveform).
• Picture/Word association (user can set the number of words to be displayed).
• Dictation (easy or difficult).
• Crossword puzzles (translation of words or listen to the words). Grid size can also be customized.
• Word Searches (display words or listen to the words). Grid size can also be customized.
• Video and questions (display text can be selected).

Mode options

This is an area where lesson priorities can be set to a percentile of any combination of the following activities.

• Listening
• Speaking
• Reading
• Writing

What's Hot: 
In Tell Me More Spanish, I could not find a topic that is not given consideration. The program is timely, with tons of real-life dialogs; the words used are those we use today to speak to each other in the Spanish language.

I think every teaching tool you'd find in a classroom is effectively presented here, and I didn't find any limitations.
I would give this program five thumbs up (but I only have two). This is learning made fun.

What's Not: 

A common error in using the Spanish language is in the negative interrogative. Years ago, when I first began living abroad, it used to drive me nuts to hear such negativity in all questions asked. Later I realized it was a cultural/education error commonly committed in speech. I would walk into a store and hear someone ask, “No hay Coca?” The question being: “Do you sell Coke?” or “Do you have Coke?” or even “Can I have a Coke?” But, what they were really saying was, “There isn’t any Coke, right?”

It was almost a year before I figured out that it wasn’t that there was no Coke to be had; it was the negative interrogative form of speaking that a perhaps unschooled (and most certainly uninformed) person would use. This incorrect way of speaking continues today and is best illustrated in the screenshot below.

The first sentence is, “Don’t you know how far it is to the next gas station?” It sounds accusatory, but it is only incorrect. The third and last sentence is accusatory. Here the person is saying, “Don’t you know when you have to pay?” (As in, "oh, you uninformed fool.") Again, this is a limitation of the computerized instructor.

[See the screenshot “Sentence practice”]

What's Hot: 
Auralog's Tell Me More programs offers three individual learning paths.

Free to Roam mode is the first choice and allows users to pick their own exercises and workshops.

Guided mode selects your learning path for you and offers a Daily Planner feature. I would just input the time I have available for each day of the week and the program calculated an end date for me based on these projections and what would be presented on the disk. Guided Mode breaks things down further into over 245 hours of material in four categories:  Listening, Speaking, Reading, and Writing.

Dynamic Mode uses sophisticated evaluation tools to customize the learning process to your needs and according to your abilities. The further you advance using this mode, the more you enable the system to be precise in evaluating what it is you need to work on to meet your learning objectives.

This is by far the most comprehensive and sophisticated, yet easy-to-use, language learning system available on the market today. There are hundreds of activities, workshops, and lessons per disk, and thousands in the complete set.

It's easy to see why there are more than 10,000 educational institutions using this product. It's no wonder that many top companies are training their employees to be more effective in this global market using this program. The only question I would have is, "How fast can it be shipped to my home so that I can begin to use it to learn?"

For the most part, Auralog's Tell Me More Premium Spanish advances to the next lesson when the current lesson has been completed, but there are a few screens that have to be manually advanced. Overall, this program can really spoil you. Why not finish the job, so I don't have to be brought back to reality by actually having to click an arrow to advance to the next exercise?

Tell Me More Premium Spanish offers a comprehensive presentation of the language. It is truly a work of art that leads its learners to a deeper appreciation and understanding of the language itself.

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