TeachMe! Russian Reviewer's Comments

TeachMe! Russian by LinguaShop is our "TopTenREVIEWS Bronze Award Winner." TeachMe! Russian is a great little program that teaches you the basic grammar of the Russian language. Before each lesson, the program clearly presents the grammar that will be involved in the lesson. It also does a good job at increasing you Russian vocabulary.

TeachMe! Russian is missing some key features-like conversation practice, a word processor converter and games and flashcards-which can give you the skills and confidence needed to better prepare you to speak and write Russian in real-life situations.

Ease of Use:  

TeachMe! Russian was very easy to use. The navigation was simple and straightforward and the help program was self-explanatory and answered all of our questions as well.

Feature Set:  

One great feature that TeachMe! Russian offers is the ability to track how well your Russian is developing and displays your personal progress results in a line scale. You must achieve a high rating on your current material in order to advance with this feature. We felt this is an especially good approach, as you can really receive a sense of accomplishment when you pass each additional section. TeachMe! Russian also lets you choose which mode you would like it to be run in to best fit your learning goals.

A unique feature that is offered with this program is a story application. This feature presents you with a wide range of stories, each of which is missing words through out. Your job is to choose the correct words to fill in the blanks.

One feature that this program is missing is the ability to have a live or simulated conversation. We feel this feature is a crucial ingredient to building the confidence and skill level needed to communicate with others in Russian.

Ease of Installation:  

We encountered no problems while installing TeachMe! Russian.

Help/Support:  

LinguaShop's support for TeachMe! Russian is decent. They provide an exceptional built-in help section, email support and a telephone support line, but you'll have to pay to talk to them through this method.

Fundamentals:  

TeachMe! Russian covers the fundamentals of Russian quite well. Its unique use of stories not only allows you to improve your reading skills, but also gain insight into Russian culture. The program's speech recognition software does not claim to determine the quality of pronunciation with great accuracy, but it does do an adequate job at rating whether the pronunciation was poor, acceptable, or good.

Effectiveness:  

With TeachMe! Russian you will gain a greater understanding of Russian grammar. The program also helps you develop and retain a Russian vocabulary and even have a section that determines your active and passive vocabulary retention.

Although TeachMe! Russian is an excellent program to begin learning Russian with; it does not have the capacity to help users attain complete fluency.

Summary:  

TeachMe! Russian is an easy way to build and retain your Russian vocabulary. We felt the biggest liability with this program was its limited ability to offer conversation practice. With a few more features and a little more room to grow, TeachMe! Russian could be a real force in the world of Russian software.