Product Description

Berlitz German Premier (Small Box) Mac/Win

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #140 in Software
• Brand: Avanquest Software
• Released on: 2008-07-30
• Platforms: Windows Vista, Windows 98, Windows 2000, Windows Me, Windows XP, Mac OS X

Manufacturer's Description

Learn to speak German at your own pace with Berlitz. Now you can learn languages the easy way with the market leading software that's been helping people learn foreign languages for more than a decade. Berlitz Premier is fast, easy and effective. Guaranteed!

With this unique, time-proven learning system, we've provided three powerful ways for you to learn:
(1) on your Windows PC or Macintosh,
(2) in your car, and
(3) on the go using an iPod or other mobile listening device.

Explore at your own pace - Berlitz Premier allows you to determine your own learning pace by deciding when you need translation - and when you don't.

Innovative Games - Berlitz Premier puts the fun back into learning with interactive games like Plug-n-Play to help increase your reading comprehension. This engaging fill-in the-blank game allows players to begin with a foreign phrase or paragraph that is missing text and a corresponding list of possible foreign words.

Advanced speech analysis - Berlitz Premier provides advanced speech analysis to help you speak like a native. Simply record, playback and compare to perfect your accent and improve your pronunciation.

For more than 125 years the Berlitz brand has been synonymous with effective foreign language learning. With learning centres spanning the globe, Berlitz has more satisfied graduates than any other program of its kind. And now Berlitz Premier is guaranteed to make learning easier and more fun than you ever imagined.

Learn on your computer - This award-winning software for both Windows and Macintosh gives you four easy ways to master languages and engaging activities mean you'll learn faster:
1 Total immersion - Learn by listening to actual conversations.
2 Multimedia learning - Enhance your knowledge by watching videos.
3 Flash card system - Reinforce your learning with this proven method.
4 Speech analysis - Improve your pronunciation with practise conversations.

Learn in your car A comprehensive German course on 4 Berlitz audio CDs. Learn in your car with a complete course on 4 audio CDs. Berlitz makes it easy to improve your fluency while you're on the road.

Learn on the go - Innovative iPod exercises... and more Practise your vocabulary using your iPod or other MP3 player. Test your proficiency with word lists that match the software.

Plus... Flash card software for your Palm or Pocket PC Vocabulary building screensaver, and much more!

Ideal for all levels

Beginner - Get comfortable as a new learner by starting with the basics:Meeting and Greeting, Basic Travel Terms, Numbers and Money, Colours, Sightseeing

Intermediate - Rapidly improve your pronunciation through conversation:Asking for Directions, Ordering a Meal, Shopping, At the Hotel, Emergencies

Advanced - Learn words and phrases that will make you sound like a native speaker:Office Conversation, Speaking on the Phone, An Evening with Friends, Survival Phrases

About Berlitz

Berlitz has helped millions of men, women and children speak new languages, and its cultural consultants have assisted thousands of organisations in reaching across cultural barriers successfully. The company's origins date back to 1878 when language tutor Maximilian D. Berlitz developed a new method of teaching people. His approach, which he developed into the Berlitz Method, was so successful it became the gold standard of language instruction and led to what would become a globe-spanning organisation.

Magazine Reviews

A host of different ways to approach learning…a powerful learning package (PC Utilities, 2009)

Customer Reviews

Comprehensive and great value
For the low price, it's quite surprising how much learning material you get here. And it's presented in a range of formats - software, audio CD and even iPod-ready files for learning on the go, and a handy flashcards app for Palm or Pocket PC. Compare that to traditional book and audio CD courses, where you'll often pay more and not end up with such a great, interactive course as this.

The CD-ROM activities are solid, stock language learning fare, and although they're not particularly innovative or exciting, they do the trick with activities such as unjumbling sentences, filling in crosswords and filling in missing words. But the strength of the course is the pronunciation practice module, where you can compare your voice to a native speaker's - excellent for perfecting your accent.

The dialogues, videos and native texts are all of a high quality, and contain enough material to give you a great working level of German. Cross-referencing with the grammar explanations is very effective here, and Berlitz have laid out the screen tidily and without clutter, so finding the relevant links is never an issue.

For a beginner it's great - although the 'advanced' level isn't really quite all that advanced. That said, it's perfect for a brush-up if you already studied some German a while back.

Good package for basic German
I've always found German a particularly difficult language to learn, but then I was taught from text books, by somebody with as much charisma and patience as Himmler!!
I have spent the last 2 days (approx 6 hours each day) studying with this package - at home and in the car, and I have learnt more than I picked up at school in 3 years. The package allows you to develop your new language skills at your own learning rate, and this is a very good feature. There are practice games included, and speech analysis to allow you develop fluency and a correct accent. Once again, this is considered a Basic package, but it will help you get by more than adequately. If you need more advanced tutoring, then other packages are available. This is a real bargain at a shade over £20, and I highly recommend it to anybody. It is especially recommended to those who have previously thought it impossible to learn a new language....I think you will be pleasantly surprised by how easy Berlitz make it, and how much fun it can be.

It's great value and gets you involved in the German language quickly - a dictionary as well would have been really nice though
Inside this Berlitz German Premiere course is a large printed manual of 176 pages [all in English, and this is a 'how to use the software/audio CDs manual' rather than a teach yourself German book]. There are also 6 CD/DVDs, the 4 CDs are German audio CDs which are completely stand-alone from the software - you just listen to them in the car or bedroom [not on the train as you have to talk out loud to practice your German]. These 4 CDs teach you things like: how to introduce yourself, shop for items, order in a restuarant, talk about your family, answer the phone, ask for directions, and .. so forth.

The other two DVDs are a software install DVD for the PC and an install DVD for the Apple [OSX]. The software runs on Vista, XP, 2000 and ME and has minimal PC requirements [800x600 display, DVD ROM drive and a sound card]. The Berlitz software installed quickly on my XP Pro PC, and it even adds a 'guess the missing German word' screensaver. This Berlitz software is split mainly into two halves. One is a series of 'flash cards' on around 80 various topics [like Animals, Travel, Weather, School, Vegetables, Shopping, Asking Directions, Professions etc..]. Each topic has around 10 to 20 Flash cards of single words that, for example, say the word [Bear] in German and English with a picture. The word is spoken, and you can hide the German and guess the word yourself [and score yourself on how many you get right]. As well as these Flip Cards, there's a seperate bit of software that adds stills and video and shows people having spoken conversations in German. The German text also appears and the spoken bit highlights. There's also the translated English if you want it. This is very useful for immersive listening to the sound of spoken German, and the conversation gets more complicated as the software runs. There's also other useful reference stuff like the sound of the German alphabet, and a text book help guide covering the structure of the language [e.g. verbs, nouns, and the grammer basics]. Plus you can export flash cards and stuff to the iPod to learn on the move as well. In fact the only thing it lacks, and this is a bit of a biggy, is a proper German/English and English/German dictionary - I know you can just buy the dictionary as a hard copy, a cheap little LCD machine [Berlitz even make one] or use freebie on-line translators, but it's a real pain one isn't included. You can build your own vocabulary list via 'Checkwords' and 'find grammatically similar words' but that's not as useful as a proper & quick 'What is das word?' dictionary. Plus this course isn't ideally suited to School kids as it doesn't integrate into their text books or lessons very well - the Berlitz course does it's own thing [it's great to help the kids immerse in the German language though, provided they are commited enough].

But otherwise this software is pretty good at getting commited adults up and going in basic conversational skills for a holiday or to kick start proper fluency. There's plenty of context sensitive help [although it talks often of Spanish as an example rather than German] and above all this software is really very cheap anyway - especially when discounted on Amazon. You could usefully suppliment it with a Berlitz German Phrase book and mini printed or LCD dictionary for the hols. For more advanced language learning Berlitz offer additional 'pay as you go' on-line interactive courses or even immersion all-day classes at training institutions. So Berlitz German Premiere is recommended - a solid 3.5* for it's simple but effective teach yourself German content and 5* for value for money.