JumpStart Languages

Rating:
Summary: Jump Start Languages
Review: My bilingual 5-year old loves this program! As with all the Jump Start programs, it is well designed with friendly characters and fun games, and is based on solid educational theory. It is a quality program. My son is really motivated to earn "globe pieces" so that he can watch video clips about one of the countries. He has learned the numbers from one to ten in all the languages, as well as alot of vocabulary (clothes and food). He also enjoys the songs in the puppet shows, and has memorized most of them.

This program doesn't teach grammar, only vocabulary and culture. Your child doesn't need to be able to read, as all the games use pictures and instructions are given orally. Some of the games require written number recognition (1-10). And your child should already know how to use a mouse and understand the basics of computer games, such as the "back button".

Overall, I highly recommend this game!

Rating:
Summary: not good for little ones...or anyone new to these languages
Review: Packaging: awesome
Screen layout: decent
Graphics: better than average
Sound: bordering on awful
Learning curve: steep
Extras: too much work to earn a little
Navigation: okay, but could be made simpler

This was an excellent idea for a program to help 3yr old kids and older learn new languages. Unfortunately, it seems to have been designed by someone/people who may be great at developing software but not so astute at developing learning tools for languages. The accents used in the four languages represented here are much too ethnic and native-sounding to be understood by anyone save someone who has already learnt the language. If that weren't bad enough, there is no supporting text/caption to help the parent who may be guiding the child. Scenario: We sat there, two adults with one kid, listening over and over to some of the French words and could not figure them out to save our lives. I thought it would be better in the Spanish pavilion given that I am more familiar with that language but it was not. So I cannot imagine any toddler who has never been exposed to a foreign language would be able to get a "jumpstart" on any of them with this software.
This software would be 3 stars better if only the makers had bothered to present not only the ethnic and native-sounding accents (which cannot help beginners) but an option to view and also to hear the same words enunciated carefully and accurately (in slow motion preferably) so that new learner will know the vowel/syllable components of the words and be able to attempt to repeat them and thereby learn them.
In spite of that there are still some fun things that can be done with this software like the theatre/dress-up performer, and colouring modules where the child can earn globe pieces to be used in the video bonus section. However in this bonus section you usually only see 4 seconds (or less) of video which makes it extremely disappointing.
If your only goal is to be able to teach your ear to hear different accents without actually learning new languages then this is great but it falls very short as a language learning tool.