Review of TeLL me More® Premium

TeLL me More® Premium is the best all-around English learning product on the market. Its speech recognition is superb, making it one of the only products that can truly help with pronunciation skills. It is rather expensive. However, the fact that TeLL me More® Premium takes learners from absolute beginner to advanced level makes it well worth the price for truly dedicated English learners.

This package, while expensive, provides everything you need to learn English. The program goes from beginner to advanced level and has over 850 hours of learning content. There are 4,500 exercises and 37 types of activities in six categories:

• Lesson Workshop
• Cultural Workshop
• Vocabulary Workshop
• Grammar Workshop
• Oral Workshop
• Written Workshop

There are three ways to use the program:

• Free-to-Roam Mode - Choose what you will
• Guided Mode - Personalized curriculum built on your specific objectives and time available
• Dynamic Mode - Computer evaluation of progress tailoring learning to your needs

TeLL me More® Premium takes a theme based approach to English learning. The "Lesson Workshop" makes up the core of each lesson and introduces through a question and answer dialogue. This makes up what I like best: the speech recognition is outstanding. After each question is asked, the student responds choosing a displayed option. This phrase is recognized and takes the discussion onto the next question. By responding in different manners, the student can practice a wide variety of appropriate responses and each conversation is different.

Here is a quick overview of the themes for the first disc:

• Introductions
• The Family
• A Party
• Brunch with a Friend
• Going on Vacation
• A City Tour

This type of standard situation approach is taken throughout the four levels. Grammar is first presented in context. Further exercises focus not only on specific grammar structures, but also on its use in written, reading, listening and oral production settings.

Pros:

• All-in-one package takes the learner from absolute beginner to advanced level.
• Task based approach focuses on learning through context - However, grammar is certainly not ignored.
• Program contains a vast amount of learning material.
• Flash-based interface works very well.
• Interactive dialogues are different each and every time depending on student response.
• Pronunciation help is first class. TeLL me More® Premium is the best available software on the market for interactive pronunciation practice.
• Speech Recognition works extremely well.
• Level of difficulty in speech recognition is adjustable.
• Audio CDs can be copied to hard drive.
• Contextual grammar explanations easily accessible from each exercise.
• Comes with audio disk to help with listening and oral production.

Cons:

• Too expensive for many learners.
• Hard to figure out how to configure options.
• Some bugs in correction - especially in extended text entry exercises.
• Advanced level dialogues seemed rather weak.
• Graphics themselves seem rather cheap compared to the programming package which is very slick (in general production values aren't as good as the programming interface).
• Some standard navigation doesn't work (tabbing for instance).