Review of Learnables.com
CDROM, CDs or cassettes with books, No pronunciation scores, Expensive, ★
They teach 7 languages, 1-5 levels each, at $140-$200 per level from them. The CDROM speaks and shows a picture simultaneously. Cassettes or CDs repeat each word in the target language, and you understand it by looking at the book.
Used books are readily available, and sometimes cassettes, for $10 or more.
The first four levels of Spanish total 3,000 words; no figures for the other languages, though they say you need to learn 5,000 words before you can talk at an elementary level. They seem to be unaware of the millions of workers around the world who use small practical vocabularies of a few hundred words to talk with bosses or customers.
They acknowledge they focus on listening and reading, by presenting pictures and words, without emphasizing speech by the learner. They say that Rosetta Stone parallels their previous approach, but that Learnables have continued research and are now better:
Besides the de-emphasis on speaking, the lessons distractingly say numbers between words:
CDROM, CDs or cassettes with books, No pronunciation scores, Expensive, ★
They teach 7 languages, 1-5 levels each, at $140-$200 per level from them. The CDROM speaks and shows a picture simultaneously. Cassettes or CDs repeat each word in the target language, and you understand it by looking at the book.
Used books are readily available, and sometimes cassettes, for $10 or more.
The first four levels of Spanish total 3,000 words; no figures for the other languages, though they say you need to learn 5,000 words before you can talk at an elementary level. They seem to be unaware of the millions of workers around the world who use small practical vocabularies of a few hundred words to talk with bosses or customers.
They acknowledge they focus on listening and reading, by presenting pictures and words, without emphasizing speech by the learner. They say that Rosetta Stone parallels their previous approach, but that Learnables have continued research and are now better:
- "Learnable® no longer uses the four-picture guessing approach and isolated, unrelated sentences. Instead The Learnables® presents pictures in story-like fashion using linguistic procedures and semantic field theory that have been found to be effective and well received by students."
Besides the de-emphasis on speaking, the lessons distractingly say numbers between words:
- "One Automobile Automobile Two Automobile Automobile Three Automobile Automobile."
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