Talk Now! Learn Portuguese - Continental Portuguese with a Monte Carlo Flair

Talk Now! Learn Portuguese - Continental Portuguese with a Monte Carlo Flair
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With EuroTalk’s Talk Now! Learn Portuguese for beginners you learn in a game-like environment reminiscent of Monte Carlo, Atlantic City, or Las Vegas. Did you ever imagine learning Continental Portuguese could be so much fun? Well, it is.

This language course for beginners has a target audience of students, families, travelers, business people, and vacationers. Talk Now! Learn Portuguese claims nothing more than to teach “essential words and phrases for absolute beginners,” and does it so well. Talk Now! Learn Portuguese has taken the school out of learning, and has given the lessons a game show quality so that you hardly realize that you are quickly acquiring language knowledge.

Talk Now! Learn Portuguese targets the novice in the language who plans to travel to Portugal for a short period of time. With this course, you are not going to have conversations in Portuguese, but it will get you where you need to be. Talk Now! Learn Portuguese clues you in to your immediate needs and surroundings in a language that is not yours. In the end, the Portuguese people will understand you and you will understand them on a very basic level. Pronunciation and word/phrase recognition is what this course is all about.

Help & Support (3 out of 5)

For a company that produces so many different levels of language software in over 100 languages, I would have thought there would be a toll free number for more immediate access to technical support other than their email address at [email protected].

Installation & Setup (5 out of 5)

Talk Now! Learn Portuguese was so easy to install on my computer with Windows XP that I was ready to start my lessons (games) before I even realized it. All I had to do was put the CD in the drive and close it. On auto-run, Talk Now! Learn Portuguese was installed. The only thing I had to do was choose whether I wanted the default option or to customize it. I chose the default.

Product Features (5 out of 5)

On the Selections for Practice screen, there are First Words, Food, Colors, Phrases, Body, Numbers, Time, Shopping, and Countries. In each one of these selections, you will find Easy Games, Hard Games, and the Picture Print Out Dictionary. Easy Games consists of learning words/phrases in pronunciation practice, and Hard Games involves word/phrase recognition when they are spoken, complete with pictures or icons of them.

On the Selections for Practice screen, there is a green button on the right-hand lower side strictly for Easy and Hard Games that is independent of the main study area. There is another interesting button at the very top of the left-hand side, of the Selections for Practice screen, that shows how many points you have accumulated and how many more points you will need to get to the awards area.

This is “Intelligent” software that remembers your mistakes and brings them back to you for practice until perfect. The “Intelligent” software is like the unrelenting teacher who never forgets, or the dealer who remembers every play you have made.

Images

Talk Now! - Eurotalk Interactive

Talk Now! - Selections for Practice

Talk Now! Countries Word Practice

Talk Now! - Easy Game 50 Points

Talk Now! - Easy Game - Body Parts

Talk Now! - Easy Game - Hard Game

Talk Now! - First Words - Lavabos para Senhoras

Talk Now~- Speaking Practice

Talk Now! - Time

Talk Now! - Hard Game - Shopping

Talk Now! - Word Practice

Talk Now! - Hard Game - Numbers

Talk Now - Easy Game - Numbers

Talk Now! Colors

Talk Now! - Countries

Suggested Features

For what this software proposes, I cannot think of anything that would enhance it. Anything else might actually be detrimental to it.

Final Thoughts

EuroTalk’s Talk Now! Learn Portuguese is a software program that teaches basic Continental Portuguese to beginners by using gaming and TV game show formats so that the learning part becomes fun and competitive. The learning goes unnoticed in the quest for points and awards. I would recommend Talk Now! Learn Portuguese not only to people who want to learn Continental Portuguese, but to people who want to have some fun in general.

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