Speaking Spanish

Choose Cassette Tapes–They’re Portable

A Review of Speaking Spanish

Karina Worlton

I consider myself somewhat of a linguist–I grew up speaking

three languages, and have since studied three more. So I felt qualified

to review Tutor Tape Multimedia’s "Speaking Spanish." I was really

disappointed by this product. After a few minutes, I had to say "basta"

(that’s enough).

First of all, this product does not use the capacities of a CD.

No video clips, no pictures, nothing exciting. It’s straight text on a

marble-look background, with sound — native Spanish speakers who read

the text for you. There’s quite a bit of text, but my understanding of

CD’s would lead me to believe that there could be even more. I would

have like to have seen clips of people using dialogue in a real

situation, or images of landmarks in Spain, Mexico, or South America.

Second, even though the text is spoken by native Spanish

speakers, they speak so quickly that you barely catch it. How can I

tell how to pronounce "doscientas" in the middle of "Puede prestarme

doscientas pesetas hasta manana?" Granted, there is a vocabulary list

where you can look up individual words, but I looked up "doscientas" and

it wasn’t included. I also didn’t like the fact that one sentence used

a mild obscenity, which was completely unnecessary.

Third, this product was filled with errors. The first one you

will notice on the opening screen. The text reads "Speaking Spanish"

with a button below that says "English," and then "Hablando Espanol"

with a button titled "Spanish." The accompanying voice welcomes you to

"Talking Spanish," in English and then in Spanish, welcomes you to

"Hablando Ingles." As you continue through the product, you will find

more errors, including missing punctuation, misspellings (such as

"defficult"–that’s an English word) and typos (such as

"caldenll"–supposed to be Spanish, but I have no idea what it says).

Furthermore, on one screen, the highlighting bar does not correspond

with the text. If you click on the sixth one down you hear the first

sentence. You cannot click on the first five.

I’ll be kind and not explain the irritating background music,

but move on to the positive aspects of this product. It is very easy to

use and install, with no documentation or help needed or provided. It

does have a good selection of text that you could use. The accents are

authentic. You get an on-line Spanish-English Dictionary. Personally

however, I would opt for a cassette tape language course over this.

You’d learn just as much (if not more) and it’s portable!

School House Scorecard

Product:	Speaking Spanish
Company:	Tutor Tape Multimedia
Cost:	Not Available

System Requirements:

PC Compatible:
386 CPU, 256 color display, 4 MB

Ram (8 Recommended), CD-ROM Drive, Windows 3.1 or higher, Sound Card and

speakers

Macintosh:
68020 CPU, 256 Color Display, 13 inch monitor, 5 MB free

memory, CD-ROM drive, System 7 or higher recommended.

Breakdown:

Ease of Use 3
Learning Value 2
Entertainment Value 1
Graphics 1
Sound 3

Overall Score: