Language Learning Software

While language learning software will provide you with the most flexible and cheapest method for learning foreign languages today, care must be take in the selection of the software because, unfortunately, not all language learning software is created equal.

I have purchased a number of different programs and found the instructional methods used and the effectiveness of language learning to vary widely. The cheapest programs I bought were also the worst programs for learning a language. While using software, they simply had moved old outdated hardcopy print publication type learning methods onto CDs and made them digital, but failed to take advantage offered by the new medium. For example, in one program an entire CD simply had a person reading a long list of foreign verbs, giving their English definitions! The next CD did the same with adjectives then came a CD with pronouns, and adverbs, etc!

You could have simply read the list from a sheet of paper and that is no way to learn a language. (True, flash cards have their place, but not long vocabulary lists simply read on a CD). Such programs were cheap, both in cost, and in quality, not worth the price I paid for them.

Therefore, when I say that language learning software provides the cheapest means of learning a new foreign language, I do not necessarily mean that the learning language software itself is going to be cheap in price. Cheap (in price) is a relative term. For example, when comparing the cost of a multimedia language learning program to the cost of moving to and living in a foreign country for a period of time to achieve total immersion in a language, or enrolling in a foreign language college course for several years at a college or university, even the most expensive multimedia learning language software programs could be considered cheap.